Zen Like Jogging
Monday, October 27th, 2008
Breathing comes as easy as the rhythm, the striding along the gutter and the sidewalk ledge.
Covered in hooded sweatshirt, snow cap and runner’s jacket, long johns and gloves, I try closing my eyes on the neighborhood streets and listening to my own body. I can’t let go entirely in case a parked car or pot hole catches me, but all I can hear is the cold air I’m sucking into my lungs, big, deep bags of air seeping in and pushing against my rib cage.
My heartbeat is there but its pulse is secondary to the wind I’m blowing in and out. The breeze rattles my jacket and the material crackles when I move my arms in motion with my long steps. I catch my shadow then in the street lamps, stretching some 20 yards ahead, a thinner version of me perfectly outlined in sherbert-colored flourescent glow.
This close to Halloween, the dogs that bark behind the fencerows at this strange bundled figure sound like wolves, maybe lycanthropes, but then I find some humility when I consider I am the only living thing out this night that’s augmented physically. And, I run on, partly daring those dogs to charge me so I can outrun them or out power them on the empty streets. But they are territorial and turn quiet as I move on past them to the next property and on to the next block, where there are no pet owners.
I can feel my stomach tightening and releasing, every few steps I remind myself to take my breath deeper, in through the nose and out through the mouth. Any wavering from that pattern and a stomach cramp ensues. I wonder, as I slowly find my inner pacing, what is driving me tonight. The houses pass while I think, some treets strung with orange and purple lights, some front porch stoops strwn with false cob webs, one house’s windows stuck with giant cat eyes peering out into the street.
Cars pass slowly by, the drivers determining what or who I am, then accelerating while I keep on, the pounding of my feet sending jolts to my kneww, up my spine, and all the while me in tune with my body. I relax and my feet and arms settle into their own motions. I am not moving them, they move themselves as though they are detached – as though I’ve been removed from them, a marionette version of me hidden under layers of strange clothes and sweating, wanting nothing from the moment but to be present. I get pulled into myself, my body just an empty flesh balloon that keeps filling with air, then releasing.
I run past a park that’s dark now, but yet it’s still a park even with no children on the equipment. And, I’m still a runner in no body, just mind, enlightened to myself. I want nothing but to finish this run and I get my wish at 21-39 as I step up onto the front porch and its slatted wood crossboards. I step back into my world, my sense deadened and my body weak, and uet sonehow still in the moment.
