basic instinct

small children, especially those who have quite recently mastered the art of moving vertically, seldom walk. they run. i don't know exactly when or why the shift to walking as the main means of transport happens, but i think it's quite interesting that we abandon running - perhaps at least partly because we are told to do so. how many times have you heard a parent telling their kid to stop running? 


i suppose that after certain age running should - in our society at least - be reserved for games, exercise and other such activities and removed from the everyday context to a place and time more specific. thus when we grow up we lose the freedom to run - very much like we lose the freedom to speak our mind frankly and honestly, asking questions the answers to which seem obvious but are everything but, taking naps at random hours and eating when we´re hungry and not because is lunch hour.


however, there are places still left in this world where running remains to be the normal thing to do. in a wildly popular (at least among certain groups) book called 'born to run' christopher macdougall writes about the tarahumara, a tribe living in mexico who are able to run hundreds of miles without rest; for them, running has remained as the primary pace of movement, like it in some point of our lives was to all of us. obviously the modern man is quite far from this kind of approach, and i don´t suggest we should all start running everywhere - i just find it fascinating that this tribe has remained in that phase of movement.


i do think running is something very fundamental. but that is not why i do it day after day like i have for the past 10 years - i'm not trying to get back in touch with something that might have been lost a long time ago. i just don't know anymore how not to run. granted, for me it is time and place specific, but yet it  is something i do without questioning.


plus it's just so damn enjoyable.

PS i admit it, this photo is not taken at 6am.  more like 8 am. it was saturday.