Slowly, slowly
About five days a week now, I go running. I put on the shorts, a T-shirt, the socks and shoes, and either on the treadmill at the health club or on the trail that follows the Rillito River, I move foot by foot and stride by stride.
I am very slow. In high school, when I ran on the track team, I could cover half a mile in a little over two minutes. I was no star, but I could move. These days, it takes me nine or ten minutes to run a mile, about five minutes for every half mile. As I continue to run, I'll probably get faster, but I know I'll never match my speed from twenty-five years ago.
I thought I would mind more than I do. I thought I would long for my old speed. I can remember training runs from those days. I don't remember the races as well, but I recall glimpses of them too.
The sensation of speed, the feel of the air moving past, of the ground passing beneath my feet, has woven itself into the memory of my muscles. But the absence of longing surprises me.
I prefer being slow. While my body groans into shape, I have enjoyed the aches, the sense of slogging through sand, the morning stiffness when I climb from my bed.
I'm no masochist or martyr. I don't seek pain for its own sake. But this tree-like change in my body, this creeping growth, suits me. To live my life incrementally, that's what I want. No more leaps and bounds. If and when I get to some faster, sleeker fellow, I'd like to have had the chance for him to grow on me. I'd like to get to know him, muscle by muscle and breath by breath.
It will be months before a new me arrives, maybe years. I'm taking the time to get ready for him they way you get ready for a new baby or write a novel or save for the house you've always wanted or correspond with a friend who lives far away but whom you hope to meet one day.
Living, working, loving slowly. Running, slowly. Each step. Each day.
This way, bit by bit, I get to arrive all the time, every day a short journey familiar and new.
I am very slow. In high school, when I ran on the track team, I could cover half a mile in a little over two minutes. I was no star, but I could move. These days, it takes me nine or ten minutes to run a mile, about five minutes for every half mile. As I continue to run, I'll probably get faster, but I know I'll never match my speed from twenty-five years ago.
I thought I would mind more than I do. I thought I would long for my old speed. I can remember training runs from those days. I don't remember the races as well, but I recall glimpses of them too.
The sensation of speed, the feel of the air moving past, of the ground passing beneath my feet, has woven itself into the memory of my muscles. But the absence of longing surprises me.
I prefer being slow. While my body groans into shape, I have enjoyed the aches, the sense of slogging through sand, the morning stiffness when I climb from my bed.
I'm no masochist or martyr. I don't seek pain for its own sake. But this tree-like change in my body, this creeping growth, suits me. To live my life incrementally, that's what I want. No more leaps and bounds. If and when I get to some faster, sleeker fellow, I'd like to have had the chance for him to grow on me. I'd like to get to know him, muscle by muscle and breath by breath.
It will be months before a new me arrives, maybe years. I'm taking the time to get ready for him they way you get ready for a new baby or write a novel or save for the house you've always wanted or correspond with a friend who lives far away but whom you hope to meet one day.
Living, working, loving slowly. Running, slowly. Each step. Each day.
This way, bit by bit, I get to arrive all the time, every day a short journey familiar and new.
posted by A Pilgrim at 12:50 PM
1 Comments:
it's not that a new you will take months to arrive -- you just need to judge the new arrival of that self in smaller, slower terms. they are there very run, every slow mile. they just demand new terms to recognize and define them. every day you run and notice it, you welcome a new you.
in what is my all-time fav novel _little, big_, john crowley, poet/novelist, had his character alice say...
"did you ever think...that maybe trees are alive like we are, only more slowly? that what a day is to us, maybe a whole summer is to them -- between sleep and sleep, you know. they have long, long thoughts and conversations that are just too slow for us to hear."
my god, i want to write like that.
"
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