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.