Changing direction

20 minutes of contemplative writing,
recorded 2 days + one year
after running farther
than I ever had
before

**

We ran straight when we should have turned right, the arrow pointed the correct way but we didn't see it, it was the falling light or the deep conversation - both, more likely - and the over fifty miles already run clouding my brain. 

A year later. Writing class on a Monday the day after getting back from a weekend up north - just like a year ago. Another Monday, another year.

A year later and I still think about it all the time: getting lost in the woods in the dark and not finishing the race.

It was good to be there this past weekend, with some of the same friends, running some miles but not a race, hiking some and still getting delightfully sore from that.

I missed the feeling of being in the event -- the possibilities and limits pushed -- while at the same time I was also somewhat grateful to observe that energy and not be part of it in the same way.

In some ways its hard to believe it was a year ago. 

It feels both close and at a distance.
                    Right under the surface and deeper down.
               I think about it less but sometimes it feels like often: running through regrets and what ifs and gratitude and wonder and certainties and questions.

Have I processed it, by now? Sort of, maybe.
Grief and elation,
    both, neither,
      together, separate.

I wondered if I would write about this and I am.
I'm not sure I'm writing what it deserves. The experience, I mean.
But I'm writing what is, what's right there, which is always enough.

Changing direction 

What has changed since then, about running?

I'm in the middle of a different exploration, I think. I am outside of structure. No clear goal aside from getting clearer about:
        what I get from running,
              what I give to running,
and what I want our relationship to feel like right now.

The word that pops in is harmony. What does that even mean. Notes played together in a way that sounds true.

I turned the page and lost my thought train.
I guess I
      changed directions.

I want to be so clear about my relationship with running that when running leaves me finally...(and it will, it's impermanent like everything else - or rather my body is impermanent)... 

Maybe running has an invisible magic like creativity that's always in the room and even when I can't channel it through my body the same way I can now, I will still be able to access it, still enjoy the magic.

Running is not my identity. It is one thing that makes up home for me. A place of ease and comfort, familiarity and safety, a port to charge. 

Wait.

What is it about running that feels like home? 

That running feels like home does not mean running IS home. 

It's more like a mirror. Or maybe a prism? 

Or am I the prism, and running passes through me, and on the other side I see colors. 

Those colors seem to be the effect of running but they're really the effect of ME. 

Running is just one kind of light that passes through the prism that is me.

Ah. 

Running isn't home.

The prism --(ME)-- is home. 

A beam of light passes though me, and my angles and edges and whatever else makes a prism work its magic cause the light to --
-- what? --
change direction? 

I forget how it works but there's something there.

exhalation

 hostile, 
         demanding
words.
then:

Silence.

*

Silence is a space for 

                    wondering
                           in
                       sadness:

Why did you say that to me?

Silence is a space for

                    spinning
                       logic
                     around
                        emotion:

What did you hope to accomplish?
Did you accomplish it?

*

I waited for you to break the silence.

I considered what
I
could say.
    but I don't think you would hear me
    and I don't care what you think.

*

Now I choose silence.

Silence as a space for

resting
          in 
              the
                    release

of what needs to be let go. 

can't think but can feel

It's too much.
The world is too much. 
I can't. 

it IS too much. 
it's okay if you can't
                                 think about it. 
but can you sink into your body?
where
           do you feel?

*

Sadness

             is 

        in my throat.

*

Wait. Maybe it's further down.

Let me see. 

*

No, I feel it in my throat. 

It's a rock.

I've been swallowing around it.
Pushing it down. 

 

well,
you don't have to force it to come up, either. 

*

Hm, okay. That's true. 

could you acknowledge it, right where it is?
release the fear of it coming up,
because it might not actually come up,
                                  and it would also be okay if it did.

it's okay to feel sad.
it's normal to feel sad.

(even though what happened/keeps happening

is not okay. not normal)

*

Yes. I could. 

*
*
*

The sadness isn't a rock,
                                       actually.
It's a bulb,
                  I think.
A bulb planted low in my throat.

When I release my grip on it a tendril emerges.

*

It doesn't do anything to change

this
fucked
up
world. 

*

But

I'm showing it to you
anyway. 

Inside Out and Outside In

 1/9/22 Retreat Writing

It feels good not to run.

That’s a true statement.

I’m the one who said it.

But there’s another side to it. Is there always another side, to everything?

Here, the other side is: it doesn’t feel good to not want to run. That’s not exactly the opposite, but a shifted other side. Or two things existing together.

It feels good to not run. Not running means I’m listening to what my body is saying. I’m proud of myself for listening.

But not wanting to in the first place, detecting the signal from my body, feels like an alarm bell.

I can’t help but think something is wrong.

And, well, it’s probably true – something is not as it usually is. Something is out of alignment. And that’s okay. It happens. I can be curious and present as I observe, and I can trust that desire will return.

But what if it doesn’t?

That’s an understandable question. But you know it’s not helpful to stay in that space. That’s future thinking and that’s what causes anxiety, for me.

Yesterday I wrote the following:

I turn myself *inside out* through writing and *outside in* through running long distances.

I felt excitement as I read those words back to myself because: they are true. And those words are coordinates to a truth I’ve always felt. Running and writing have always been connected for me. But I didn’t have the exact coordinates until yesterday. And now I do. The excitement I felt reading those words back is because with the coordinates in hand, I can get to the truth easier and faster.

If running is how I turn the outside in, and I don’t want to run right now, it follows that I might not have the capacity to take the outside in right now.

If writing is how I turn the inside out, it follows that writing might be the way to balance myself right now. I need to write, I need to get the inside out, so I can find the capacity to take the outside in again.

This feels like Alchemy.

Writing and running are ways I transmute energy.

My energy has been off lately.

My capacity to run and to write might be external barometers for how my energy is doing. Writing and running are weather reporters for me. I can check in on one or the other and easily see how I’m doing.

They are also release valves I can adjust. Or maybe locks for dams. Adjusting one or the other might raise or lower something within me. I can use them to balance myself.

Oh, okay. Right. I knew this, I think. At least on some level. But to intentionally name it gives it more power. Power tools. Ah ha. I see. Okay.

Write more, right now.