(Segment 5)
Quality control, frame guarantee, warrantee exposed to the harsh elements outside. Snowstorm in Spring. Cold winds are busy reducing the life expectancy of old weathered bones. My frame, the man’s frame, is in need of the update, I have said it is. Cast from chrome, the new body has a Chromecast™ feature. Piracy of the airwaves, stolen electromagnetic spectrums send gravitational ripples, waves of pressure pulling down and through the physically massive bodies with which they interact. I feel inert. My chest is heavying, and my head is horribly light.
I JUST RAN UP A HILL FOR FUCK SAKES.
Running is a beautiful pastime, it truly is. I would encourage anyone to take up the sport in a hope that they might also experience the thrill of weightlessness, a weightlessness that comes from fluid steps driven down through the balls of your feet, our feet, up the communal arch of the foot, sending kinetic energy into the shared ankle. Swish sway swish. Having said this, starting is most definitely the point of rupture – rupturing a gland, organ, knee, pride, thrombosis, piano key necktie. And I have just done it again, I am trying at least. Taking the shared limbs – I booked them out for the afternoon, I hope no one minds – I tried to ascend the hill in one straight push, but that wasn’t happening. Walking through a haze, it returns continuously. Why doesn’t it get easier to fight through the haze? Perhaps it can never be easier.
So why do I do it? Beyond the weightlessness (and the sneaky joy of taking control of the Library Legs) I have been made intensely aware of my own mortality. This is not easy, even to think about. But it happens, and it also happens to perpetuate itself. I wish I knew why this hole in my mind wishes to dig itself down yet further, where will the dirt pile up? ‘Alongside’ shows poor dirt management, any experienced 10-year-old on the beach knows this.
Instruction for beach hole:
Deposit excavated sand at least 500 paces from dig site.
Moving swiftly back
Constant. I am constantly analysing my emotions, my thoughts and feelings. Feeling my feelings doesn’t seem to be on the agenda. 16th August 2019 shifted my thought processes violently (I just began to frown, and I am actively thinking about it. Perhaps because I am writing this and sitting within a hyperaware pocket – space time pocket – space time hot pocket). This is fucking hard man. Whatever. I am just waiting, waiting in the worst kind of tension. Not for something life threatening to happen to me, but for something to happen to those around me. An under realised side-effect of becoming mortally aware, is that you don’t just become self-aware, but collectively aware. These words don’t come close to expressing the feeling of the white-hot chest bound ball that wells up when someone drives a long-distance trip. Already it feels like borrowed time. Fluid motion is a way through, to dwell in thoughts like these make for no good drinking buddy. Slumped at the bar, barely breathing, I recite my woes to a woefully beer-wet ear.
*Sigh*
And at the end of the day I am not even sure it means anything. Perhaps that will make it easier in the long run.
Instructions:
Take a long run