Dreams that pull outward: Running
It’s the middle of yet another crazy dream: Something about cell-phones giving away the fact that I’ve been doing something immoral with or on top of a desk, and my ex-husband apologizing for calling my phone and explaining that it wasn’t nearly so bad as the fact that I slept in his car while he cheated on his new girlfriend two blocks away.
Seriously, that dream got so weird that I decided, in-dream, to check out for a while and take a break. As the dream was happening in the neighborhood I used to live in long, long ago, and it was kind of chilly and there was nothing really to do, I decided to go for a run.
Normally I hate running — "Do you run?" the joke in Real Genius goes; "Only when chased!" But this time, it was different.
An excerpt, just for the hell of it, from Ch. 2 of my novel, which opens with the exhausted main characters fleeing for their lives through a strange and confusing land…
—–
Everything blurred into running.
Hiss of grass on legs–first tickly, then abrasive–and scrape of breath in throat, harsh throb of muscles, permanent pain in ribs — the unleavened taste of the Plains, the insistent beauty of the now purplish sky hovering like a quiet kalidoscope over their heads — it all fused, became a god, became Running, and they worshipped and feared it, suffering along, heads bowed straight down like good little mortals.
—–
Then, later, when the first of them realizes one of the things that makes this place special:
—–
Then it hit him.
It was like somebody’d turned a light on, changing completely how everything looked without actually changing it at all…it was as though he’d suddenly woken up to see the reality of what he’d been dreaming about all day.
It was a more profound experience, he’d say later on, than his death had been. Who was Daniel Graff? Just some guy…But this was the death of Running.
He wasn’t tired. He didn’t hurt, anywhere, at all. He wasn’t running, he was floating at extraordinary speed. But he wasn’t flying, either. He looked down, and stared stupidly at his hooves, the sharp dark things on the ends of his sticklike white legs which flashed in and out of existence, blowing the grass into a flat path beneath them, apparently on their own power. His throat was a little raw, but he swallowed a few leisurely times and it was soothed.
What he’d just accomplished was nothing short of freeing himself from bondage to a powerful god, and Nova felt the awe of it in a place deep in the dark center between his lungs; a place where gods were obvious; a place he’d…forgotten.
—–
That’s pretty close to what I dreamed, except that it was just me and my sneakers on old familiar sidewalks, and I realized suddenly that I’d hit it, hit the stride, could feel every millimeter of the movement and yet had time to adjust anything. When I turned, the strain on my ankles annoyed me; I learned quickly to put a foot out, if there was a tree or pole, and use it to launch myself around corners. I thought I must be going a zillion miles an hour, but it felt like floating.
I remember thinking, "Wow, taiji really helped with my ability to run…" –and it was something like taiji, actually, in that it was total attention and total control coming together as perfect ease.
Here’s the funny part: In the two days since this dream, I’ve tried running several times. Obviously I don’t feel like Nova does in my story, or quite like I did in my dream, but there’s definitely something there that wasn’t there before. Even funnier, in the dream I met another runner, an older black man (who smelled archetypal, like Elvis) who told me that if I worked hard, I might be allowed to remember this skill. (This was before I finished my run and had to go back and deal with the desk-phone-love-triangle BS again. ;)
The heel lands first; the whole foot rocks over the ground; the energy builds and the toe shoots it up the leg; it comes from the earth up, not the body down. It pulls me right into a trance. And it feels pretty darn wonderful, actually.
I think…I want a treadmill. ;)
(P.S. The prose I quote from my own work here is uncharacteristically purple (flowery), fyi. Most of the piece is in much plainer language…but it seemed to warrant some texture, here.)
Posted December 3rd, 2008 in aesthetica, mo' betta consciousness, tai chi, writing | 
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I'm a polyphasic proselytiser, a provoked pacifist and a pupil philosopher. Any one of my hundred thousand hobbies and interests might be featured here at any time, so keep those eyes peeled. If you've got anything interesting to tell me, you can always get me at puredoxyk*at*puredoxyk*dot*com. Thanks for reading!
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