I write while I run. And I’m literally thinking that, while I run: “I write while I run.”
I don’t construct complete sentences (usually), but there are thoughts that drift in and out – some worthy of keeping and some that should be let go. I haven’t written much lately, though, because I’ve been too busy building a Content Management System and a web site for a client. It’s been draining. I forgot how draining a flat-rate project can be when it gets down to the end and the details never quite reach a point of completion. We’re there now, the back and forth of “well what about this?” and significant pieces of functionality that, upon deployment, we find still need to be built to make the thing complete.
It was just a run to the jetty. I figured it would be about a mile and a half each way. I put on my new shoes to break them in on the beach, because they’re lighter, faster, less-supportive shoes and I’m not sure my stride is worthy of them but I really wanted them because they’re orange and I had a credit at zappos anyway.
All down the beach I zig-zag back and forth between the soft sand higher up and the harder wet sand when it's not too steep to be comfortable. It's early for the beach, as I've just returned from dropping the boys off at school, so there are only the ultra-committed vacationers who want to suck out every minute of beach time they can.
As I approach the jetty, there’s a woman. She’s standing on the jetty taking a picture or something. I feel something in my toe and worry that my new shoes are going to give me a blister my first time out, so I stop and sit on a jetty rock to check on my toes. She climbs down off the jetty. Gorgeous, and not a tourist taking a photo but a jogger taking a rest. She steps off the jetty twenty feet away, stretches her arms and smiles at me. She takes a deep breath and strides off.
And there's me: checking my toes for blisters.
When I started today’s run, I was planning on running along the beach to the jetty, then from the jetty through the state park back to my condo. I just didn’t feel like quite so much soft sand today. So I put my sock and shoe back on and start towards the barbeque cabanas that will lead me to the parking lot that will take me to the road back through the park. And my brain says to me: “What if she’s waiting for you? What if she “gets tired” and stops at one of the hundreds of resort chaise lounges along the beach for a few minutes rest, and maybe looks down the beach to see if you’ve turned around yet and if you’re coming?”
I go through the first cabana, turn left in the parking lot, then turn left again through a second cabana and hit the trail back to the beach.
As I reach the beach again, an appropriate song comes on my iPod. It’s Yeves Laroc and the song is an electronic / house-beat called “Nomadic Knights”:
As we all walk through life
As a nomad. A lone child.
Walking. Running. Going 'cross the desert sands.
Nomad.
Up near the parking lot the sand here in Panama City Beach is so deep and soft you can lose your shoes. You sink six inches with each stride. This makes for a horrendously difficult workout, but while “Nomadic Knights” plays I think of Lawrence of Arabia. I’m striding through the desert sand on this quest to see if maybe, just maybe, this girl is waiting.
I write the last sentence of an essay: “And I ran off after her, chasing in her the ideal I was not sure I wanted to attain.”
It’s been three years this month that my ex and I filed for divorce. I then spent two years fixing myself while sailing down the Pacific coast into Mexico, and another year fixing my body – coming out of the malaise, the carelessness and complacency of a relationship where physical fitness becomes less important than sleep and work and re-bonding every weekend over steaks and wine and warm chocolate cake.
Three years later and I'm back in shape. I haven’t bench-pressed more since grad school during the workout commitment just after a different relationship ended. Today, after some water and a banana, I will start on sport bottle #1 of today’s gallon of green tea. Yes, I consider that I may appear vain if I share these things. Yes, I consider how I look if I post a status to all my friends saying I got a honk while running. Ultimately, I think people who live their lives alone (for the most part) must compliment themselves because it’s too important to feel good about themselves and the things they do well. People don’t give each other nearly enough compliments. I resolve to tell my friends how great they are when they are great.
A friend recently told me she and her husband of a few years were separating and filing for divorce, and one of his status posts yesterday was from a gym. Taking care of ourselves is just what we do when separation happens. It was a shock to me, this beautiful couple and their outdoorsiness together -- and what I’d always assumed was their shared passion for motorcycles and off-roading in their trucks. But I knew her better than I knew him, and never really thought she was meant for the suburbs and commuting and then the sand dunes on the weekends.
Who really knows who we’re meant for, or if we’re really meant to be with anyone forever. I’m growing more cynical, and the woman running ahead is not waiting. In fact, she’s farther away – a better runner than me or just on a different schedule. I slog at a pace of 13:00/mile through the heavy sand, leaning forward as the sand gets heavier. I think of a friend who just achieved a million miles in the air, a friend much like Clooney and Ryan Bingham (since Clooney is Ryan Bingham and Ryan Bingham is Clooney): handsome, single, 40s, hip, friendly. There should be a club for us, with Clooney as our figurehead. We are men at peace with ourselves and the world, handsome and experienced, in no hurry for anything but to enjoy being with someone, occasionally, until something amazing happens and we stand there at her door on a cold Chicago night and realize she’s not who we thought she was. We nod our head. We shrug, relieved, we suppose, that it didn’t take too long, this time.
But then there is the twinge of something else. This feeling that makes nature happen. This idea that if the timing were right and the woman were right and there was adequate money to do that and still live this life adventurously… there’s just maybe that bit of hope for just one more – I mean… I make such beautiful babies and Charlie Chaplin had kids at sixty (or something like that – so said Billy Crystal in “When Harry Met Sally”).
At nearly four miles and back in front of my condo the lady jogger is nowhere to be seen. The watch/heart-rate monitor/GPS reads 3.8 miles and I think “That’s close enough. I’m still sore from Wednesday’s run.” I slow to a walk, stretch, and something fires in my brain. I determine that I will not quit before four miles, and to punish myself for even considering it I run in only the heaviest sand. I loop around a trash barrel and check the GPS: “3.89” – a little further and I can turn around. “3.91” and I turn around the second barrel and run back. I’m Herschel Walker working out in the off-season, my shoes sinking nine, ten inches each stride and my knees almost to my chest until I find a track from the Beach Patrol ‘s pickup and it gets easier. “Get out of the tire tread, you pussy!” I think. “Would Hershel Walker run in a fucking tire tread?” I breathe deeply each stride, grunting and “pshaw”-ing rather than the in/nose-in/nose-in/nose-exhale/mouth of my normal pace.
I reach my stairs at 4.01 miles. My shirt – an Ex Officio undershirt meant for the tropics, paper thin when dry, is now soaked through and looks like toilet paper clinging to my chest. I breathe, hands clasped behind my head, I take out my headphones. I walk up the stairs, kicking the sand off my shoes. I ride the elevator up to the eighth floor. I open my door and walk down the hallway to the balcony where I sit and sip my water, the families assembling below, the jet-ski and beach chair rental company preparing for their day. The Gulf of Mexico stretching off forever, and my mind beginning to come back to this world.
