Wednesday, February 16, 2011

treadmill

Well, here I am up at night and trying to write something. I am deeply insecure about writing, because it seems like something everyone is doing these days. Everyone writes and posts, and it is usually more entertaining or insightful that whatever I can come up with. At least that is how I see it. I go around all day thinking about what I want to write. I do this especially when I am on the treadmill, running. I haven’t run outside for a long time. I haven’t even run on the treadmill too much recently- my knees suffer every time- but every time I do my thoughts always wander down the same paths. First, what I want to be doing with my day, and then my life, and then what I shall write about the moment the treadmill stops. I will go back and sit in front of my locker and take out my phone and start text-typing my thoughts before I lose them. No, that won’t do. There are a lot of naked old ladies in the locker room, and that seat in front of my locker would not be very comfortable. And I am a terrible text-typer. I will have to arrange a time to go sit in a cafĂ©. I will have to coordinate my intentions with David’s work schedule so that he can watch the kids and put them to bed. I will have forgotten whatever it was that I wanted to say. No, that won’t do. I will have to go home, wrangle the children into bed early, take a hot bath, and drink a lot of wine. Then I can go to my happy place, where I don’t care about the piles of clutter on my desk, and can write at my own computer without any distraction. My exhausted husband will already be asleep anyway. No, that won’t do. I still will have forgotten everything I wanted to say by then. Only now is it all crystal clear to me. Now, while I am moving steadily forward without thought about where my foot will fall. Now, every thought comes together in a rhythm. Regular. True.

I am positioned in front of a wall of windows. I fix my gaze on the reflection of my left eye in the glass. No, that won’t do- I fix my gaze on the old brick beyond my reflection, where the architect’s office anchors. I follow the trail of the mortar in my mind and lose sense of time and place and have only breath: in. Out. Out. Out. Cars pass in before me, going somewhere. I am going somewhere. I am stationary. I am out of this world.

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