runner's high

i had one of my favourite types of runs today. it starts out as a thought that maybe i'll do a shorter one today -- i had a relatively intensive ashtanga yoga practice yesterday, plus the whole week of exercise before that, so legs felt a bit tired.


when i start running i do indeed  feel a bit worn out, but not overly so; just don't necessarily feel like sprinting or in any other way pushing it too much. so i just jog along and enjoy the feeling of spring in the air and the fact that i don't have a schedule, that it is the weekend and i don't have to be anywhere at a certain time. after some 20 minutes the tiredness seems to lessen, and i decide to do a normal run after all; and after 20 minutes more it feels like a rather good idea to do a long one.


it is a beautiful day, i'm listening to nice tunes,  the sun shines and i feel i could run forever. i love that feeling; it is so simple and yet it makes you feel like you're on the top of the world. i stop to take a few pictures every now and then, think about things i would like to do today; there is a feeling of complete ease, everything is so bloody simple and hassle-free, and i just run. these are the types of moments when i feel completely at peace, and i lack to words to describe how valuable and precious they are to me.


in short, the run today was the type that has the capability to make me happy.

remember the time

he was old enough now to feel nostalgia without it being just a passing  thought of something that he used to like. the memories of the days past and the events, people and places that had defined them had melted together and been wrapped into the sepia-colored veil of an old photograph, warm and gentle and soft. it allowed him to forgive and concentrate on what had mattered; or rather, what mattered now. some things he was able to remember with a striking clarity, whereas others were obscure like a dream you can't quite recall except for the way it made you feel; and yet it troubled him that he couldn't be sure if any of these things had indeed taken place, if the days he now longed for had been real.


for what is a memory if not an interpretation?

yawn

there's two main types of tiredness, the one that goes away and the one that doesn't. in other words, the one that has a reason -- not enough sleep -- and the one that hasn't, at least a reason you could easily point out and fix.

the first one can be extremely annoying and can bring about all kinds of side effects; anyone who has ever been tired for longer than a day for whatever reason knows this. irritation, lack or excess of appetite, short-term memory loss, aching eyes, slowness of thought -- the list is long and surely varies from person to person . but the good side is that once you catch up with your sleep, you do feel better -- even if it may take a while there is always the knowledge that this will pass, and that knowledge alone makes the tiredness easier to bear. 

and then there is the other, much more vague and shapeless tiredness; the one that is difficult if not impossible to define and that sits on you like a  piece of gum in hair. the type that makes you lose not your ability to concentrate on anything but your motivation to do so; the kind that makes you want to just sit and stare at a wall. you don't want to do anything and you don't even know why as all reason and logic escapes this kind of tiredness. it just is, in its own right; the sluggish, thick concept of paralyzing fatigue that crawls inside your every cell and makes a home there.

i have found that these two types of tiredness sometimes come hand in hand, sometimes by themselves; and one can bring about the another. what i don't know is how to treat the latter, other than to wait that it passes. due to this it is always a bit unnerving to acknowledge its presence; what if it this time doesn't leave?

always on my mind

even if he now knew by convincing evidence that M wasn't real, it was hard for him to stop talking to him or altogether ignore him. it wasn't like M would have intruded or forced his fabricated presence on him; no, on the contrary - it was him who always sought M out, him who picked up the phone and called, even when he knew that he was talking to himself. there were a few times he extended the time between contacting M -- days, even weeks -- but he always eventually did. but it was uncomfortable to push the boundaries of their relationship; every time after he called M after one of his silent treatments M would sound hurt and apprehensive -- of course M never said anything, he was too delicate in his manners for that, but he could feel M's scolding through the telephone line, and he would feel ashamed like a child caught doing something he shouldn't. 


and he couldn't have just ignored M -- it would have been too rude,  and he also didn't have the heart to tell M that he knew he wasn't real; that is, after all, the most horrible thing you can say to someone.

turn and face the strain

time and changes; undeniably tied together. nothing is static and nothing remains as it is right now -- even if things can very well happen multiple times, not to mention the repetitive cycle of seasons and other such large scale patterns, nothing is ever the same. every single moment of our existence is unique. the thought is rather intoxicating.


change can be gradual or sudden.  gradual change is a one you grow into; the ultimate fear of waking up one morning and realizing your life has passed you by; whereas the sudden change is easy to spot, obvious and rubbed in your face -- winning the lottery or getting paralyzed in an accident. destiny, says someone; coincidence, says i.


gradual change is somewhat more interesting and also more dangerous as you don't necessary even notice it unless you really stop to look at the state of things.  even if  the sudden one tends to make bigger shifts in the course of your life -- or maybe it only feels like that because the amount of change is compressed into a one single moment and not spread out as it is in the case of gradual change -- gradual change you fall into, slowly, and if you don't pay attention it is possible to end up in a point you never would have wanted to be in, had you been given that option as a sudden change. 


the difficulty, of course, is that you get only one shot. you can never know if the choices you make will be the right ones until you have done them; and you can never make those exact choices again. we can't go back in time, and even if we could we wouldn't end up where we started.

nothing to say

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,

And along the trampled edges of the street

I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids

Sprouting despondently at area gates.

The brown waves of fog toss up to me

Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,

And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts

An aimless smile that hovers in the air

And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

T.S.Eliot - Morning at the Window

relate

today the world is washed out of colour. there are no shades, no highlights; just the overruling evenness that makes everything seem bleak and impersonal.


today the world is unimpressive. it is clad in a dress of mediocrity; it has not the expressive, vital power of the sun or the explosive, primal force of a storm. it merely is, sullen and somber, and as i step into it i can feel it in me and on me. it does not give me anything,  nor does it take; and i can't stop it existing even if i tried to. i want to get a reaction but today it is not possible; today there is no response offered. but don't be mistaken - the world is not mute or without grace. today it just hasn't got anything to say, and the beauty of it comes from a place that escapes all definition.


today i look at the world and recognize the same bleakness that lies within my own being; the same veil that fades out the extremes and tones down the contrasts. the same unexpressive existence that results in nothingness and leaves no mark of itself; because tomorrow the memory of today is of no relevance.


i want to speak but i lack the words; and the silence makes me scream.

not again

"i have come to be afraid of nights" he confessed to his friend, and in an instant he knew how foolish it sounded. 

he saw the bemused flicker in his friends otherwise earnest eyes, and knew he could never explain his terror so that his friend could fathom it; could never describe the gripping anxiety that had became his lover or the faceless, shapeless fear that filled his dreams and made him terrified of falling asleep.  he lacked the language to describe these to the man sitting opposite to him, a man so even in his own nature and so certain of what and who he was that nothing could move him.  so he knew that in the eyes of his friend the experience he had just tried to bring to words, a one that had started to shape his whole existence and to push him towards and over the limit of something else entirely would remain as just one of his many quirks; and he felt silly for even trying.

trial and error

we all have dreams. i don't mean the brain poop that occupies your head during the night and makes you wonder in the morning if you are indeed starting to lose it; i mean the dreams we have for our futures, for our lives; how we see ourselves in the future in comparison to how we are now. whether your dream is to have a family, be successful (by what standards, up to you), be a doctor or a teacher or whatever field of profession intrigues you or travel the world, whatever -- it makes no difference, we all have those. perhaps there are people whose only dream in life is to preserve what they have; this group aside, usually people's dream have more or less something to do with wanting to attain or be something that not yet is.


this is interesting because if the dream is strong enough and not just a mere fancy (say, i always thought it would be fun to be an actor but i never really did anything to be one -- therefore this is not really what counts as a dream) -- it affects your behavior. perhaps you choose your line of study in order to pursue your dream; maybe you endure hardships just because you can see that your dream is worth it. the truth is that you make your decisions based on your dreams, at least to an extent -- granted, very practical a person might try to give up dreaming altogether and go with the safe option, but to the majority of us our dreams have a certain kind of steering power. 


but what are dreams then, and what are they based on? and how do you know if they are worth pursuing and not just a folly, possibly even implemented on you by someone or something else? no matter what your mother may have told you, we can't be anything that we want to be; you may yearn to be the prima ballerina of the national theater but if you don't have what it takes, you are just  not going to make it. sure you can then dance in your own living room, but it's hardly the same, now is it -- if your dream was to be on the stage, that is.


and then there is of course the situation when you think you are going after your dream and in some point end up realizing that it wasn't even your dream in the first place, or that you were lacking some essential information in terms of what you thought it would be; and when the dream turns into reality you realized that this was not what you wanted at all.


so dreams, as strong and powerful and mind-setting as they can be, aren't necessarily realistic. and here lies the core of the problem -- how on earth are you supposed to know which dreams are attainable and not just a waste of your time? and how can you know if, even if you would reach it, it is what you thought it would be?


of course the only way to see is to try, i guess. but it is frustrating, and it can be scary as well; and sometimes you wish that there were someone who could tell you for a fact how things are, and that you could rely on that information.


in the meantime you just have to try and accept the possibility of it all going to hell.


or you don't try for the fear of failing or for the uncertainty of your dreams validity and you never even have a chance of making it come true.


 your call.

dimensions

as fanatic at times as i am about exercise, i am not a fan of doing it with other people. at all.  i suck at team sports -- maybe i just can't take the pressure that my potential fucking up does the same for the whole team --  and i've never really understood people who need company to go out for a run. i mean, you don't go out there for a  chat, do you? 


but the thing i dislike the most is all kinds of group exercises, such as aerobics, body pumps, zumbas and whatever they have going on these days. i absolutely and utterly detest the brightly lit rooms with mirrors on the walls, being surrounded by women in tights to who i keep bumping into because of my complete lack of coordination and sense of rhythm. i don't think anyone particularly likes these things, but i can't get over them. i just can't. 


i have tried -- i went to a kettle bell class a few times and even if i sort of liked the actual sport, i found the setting to be too much, especially when the warm-up of the class consisted of different kinds of aerobic hops -- in which i miserably failed. i have also been to a body pump class and even some kind of aerobics (well, that was a long time ago) and all of them were just bloody awful.  the only group exercise i can bring myself to do is spinning, and i think this is largely because they turn the lights off during the class. 


so i think part of the fascination of running comes from the solitude of it. when you run, nothing can really touch you -- you're in your own bubble of existence, and even if it crosses that of others, they don't really intersect with each other. i was thinking about that this morning when i was running through the center of helsinki, very empty at the time; that even if there are people around me, they are not in my mode; they can't get to me.  i and them are in a different space, in a different rhythm; i don't exist to them and they don't to me.


and that, for me, is something i really need. in the end, i don't want to be forced to think or pay attention when i exercise; running gives this possibility, but it also allows for the complete opposite -- really thinking of something, should you so choose to. because it's only you at present. 

true blue

The blue hour comes from the French expression l'heure bleue, which refers to the period of twilight each morning and evening where there is neither full daylight nor complete darkness. The time is considered special because of the quality of the light at this time of day.


Wikipedia


and it is. 


there is such beauty in the mornings now i honestly don't have words for it. the way the sunrise colors the sky into shades so delicate they are gone in the next second; and how the gradually increasing light makes everything so alive, so vivid and yet so fragile -- and to be in it, inside it and part of it -- it is wonderful.

capiche?

the feeling of not belonging is quite a peculiar one. it can be either positive or negative, depending on how one experiences it -- if you want to belong and not to feel like an outsider and you can't, it can be consuming, even destructive; if you nurture a concept of being so unique that nobody just gets you it can be quite empowering as well, at least if you choose not to care what others think. but what does it mean, not to belong, and where does it lead?


i do think we all have the tendency to think we are somehow special; the degree of this varies from person to person. some people are so wrapped in their own individuality that they can't see beyond themselves, and if they are not where they would want to be in life it is because they haven't been given the chance or that their uniqueness just hasn't been recognized yet; to this type of person it never occurs that maybe they are not that special, after all. if this type of person doesn't fit in, it is always because other people are uninteresting or don't get them. they get away with everything, at least in their own mind, because they truly think the same rules that apply for everybody else don't apply for them; and every misfortune and obstacle in life can be blamed on the fact that the rest of the world just doesn't see how different they are.


at the other end of the scale you have people who don't think they are special at all. but even this group separates itself from the rest through this humbleness and humility -- it can be genuine, but they recognize it nevertheless. they may say something along the lines like "i'm so ordinary, there is absolutely nothing special in me" but even that definition screams the differentiation from the rest of the pack who tend to think they are something.


i guess the point i'm trying to make here is that we are just as understood as we want to be. if the people around you don't see what you are about, find people who do. if you want to express something and make yourself understood, do so -- if you really have the need. maybe you don't -- maybe you like being misunderstood. it happens.


and as true as it is  that some people are more gifted, some more intelligent, some more perceptive, some more socially inept and so forth, what would be the most important thing to remember is that we all have value, and that value is exactly the same. be as special as you want to be; but not for one second think that you are somehow better than the rest. i would think that that would be the starting point for us all to feel like we belong.

days on end

ever since he was a child he had always assumed that things would eventually correct themselves; that what should happen, would, and it would be like meeting an old friend -- comforting, effortless, with a sense of familiarity, and he would finally feel at ease with himself and the world. but the expectation of things --  of himself -- finally falling into place, the expectation he had relied on since his childhood didn't seem to be fulfilled, and by the time he realized that he had given up on hope that it would ever happen, it was too late to change the premise anymore. so he stayed like that, in that constant state of waiting, even as he no longer believed in a result; and days lost their importance as something that makes no difference anymore does.