Across hill and vale and moor

I want to run.

I want to run a 5K...and a 10K, and a half-marathon, and the big shebang herself.  I think I ought to start with the 5K, though.  No sense in going backwards.

I should note that I haven't the faintest idea about how to train.  I don't know how my body will react to running on a road rather than on a conveyor belt.  I don't know how I even became this endorphin junkie.  I dreaded "The Mile".  I, like many former asthmatics and painfully insecure middle- and high-schoolers, avoided that terrible day like the plague.

To me, the non-athlete, the gym teachers always seemed a touch vindictive that day.  Each stood blandly, unforgiving stopwatch in hand, at each quarter, calling out times and hiding judgments behind deceivingly encouraging teacher-eyes.  I always began strongly, bounding along in the front half of the pack.  I would feel a stab of hope when I reached the first teacher in under two minutes.  Eight minutes isn't bad.  But I always finished at nine or ten minutes, and embarrassingly red-faced at that.  My only consolation was that I wasn't...last.  Even now, I shudder at the thought.  How shameful.  It was partly the terror of being last that propelled me around the track and, the instant it was all over, as far away from gym class as possible.  (I much preferred English.)

And these days, I run not one mile, but several at a time.  Unthinkable.  I don't always go about it in the healthiest way - I do feel things pop, lock, complain, and burn every now and then - but still.  How did I ever manage, I wondered this evening (after my date with the conveyor belt, of course), to make it from non-athlete to almost-addict?

I learned not to underestimate myself, at least in this respect.  I learned not to take my muscles for granted, powerful actin and myosin and adenosine triphosphate and everything in between.  (Yes, I am a devotee of biology, and if you know me, you know that.  You also know that I never apologize for this love.)

But I digress.

I learned to bathe in wind.  I learned to dig into the road and propel myself forward with every stride.  And now, I have my own special time, something I create for myself at will.  It is my time, only mine.  And during this time, I am strong, lean, in control.  I can do anything, because my legs will carry me across hill and vale and Secret-Garden moor.  (I always did like that word, "moor".  It sounds dreary at first glance, but if you think about it, a moor is a vast area of empty land - the perfect place where sullen, sickly Mary could have learned the joys of a good run.)

Vanilla ice cream

He must really want the ice cream.

I mean, seriously.  He must really want it, because he's turning the charm way, way up.   Remember when sugar was all it took to make you happy (and much too hyper before bedtime, I might add)?  Between vanilla ice cream and summer vacation, I don't think the little one even remembers what a bedtime is.  But he's so happy that I understand why my parents are humoring him and not shepherding him upstairs.

This is the age of ice cream, for sure.

This is the age of charming smiles and innocent honesty.  What I wouldn't give to keep him here, so he never has to make a mistake.  He would be saved!  He would never know the blunt sting of that moment...that instant when you know that you messed up.  He would never know the sharp but persistent compulsion to fold in on yourself in case you get to vanish for a little while.  He would never know the ache of deferring the tears...downright rejecting them so you can rationally deal with the fallout and contain the damage.  He would never know the sudden fear, the rapid heartbeat (a physical confirmation that this is very much real and happening now, now, now).

Why should a child who only wants dessert ever have to find out that people lie and manipulate?  Why let him find out that there are countless shades of gray between marching him upstairs right this minute and giving in, just for today?  Why can't I just absorb everything, anything that could ever threaten his happiness?  Why taint him?

After all, he's perfectly content with his vanilla ice cream.

I'm awake.

As irrational as I can be, even I know that four hours past midnight is not a decent time of day (night?) to be belting.  And so, I restrain myself.  I am resigned to the fact that I will wake up everyone upstairs if I start.  But let it be known that I found a challenging song and I would so like to try it out.  I'm almost tempted to run down to the basement...but I might be heard anyway since this house is so conveniently pindrop-silent.

All of the normal people here are currently flitting through dreamscapes and enjoying those good ol' rapid eye movements.  I, on the other hand, am traipsing through frustration.  The only eye movement that I'm experiencing is blinking.  My point is that I am wide awake and broadcasting this fact to whoever happens to be reading.

I can't wait for it to be...eight o'clock?  Is that a better time?  I'd better wait until nine.  Ugh.  I can't hunt for YouTube covers for five more hours.  I've been doing that for the last two, and I don't think there are five more hours of covers even available on the Internet.

I'm not looking forward to tomorrow (today, really.)  Perhaps that's why I'm awake.  My nervousness went and hunted down my sleepiness, trampled it to music-less bits.

Tell the story.

You don't expect it.  You can't expect it, really, because if you do, all you end up with is forced rhymes, recycled melodies, and disappointment.  And get this - if you try really, really hard, you come up with something interesting.  Yes.  Then you realize it's that song you've been humming for the past week, and proceed to bang your head against the nearest wall.  Moral of the story?  Originality can't be manufactured.

You can't sit down and think, I'm going to write a love song that could be done at weddings today.  You can't decide that today is a day for writing a slew of fabulous, foot-tapping, radio-ready hooks.  You can't close your eyes and will inspiration to float down and mist your mind like perfume.  It just doesn't work like that.  If that were the case, I'd probably be living like a revered ascetic in a secluded forest someplace, living on nothing but my daily dose of divine inspiration.  The mundane reality is that I live a pretty ordinary life in a pretty ordinary suburb (albeit a suburb outside the greatest city on Earth).  One distinguishing tidbit about my situation is that for the past twelve years, I have written in the same place - on my bed.  This bed has traveled the world, from White Plains to Vienna to Ardsley, and thank goodness it has, because I actually can't write anywhere but there.

Sometimes the whole song does flow forward, head to fingertips, a current of thought and emotion.  This happens quite often, actually.  I'll have a few notes that tumble around in my head, twisting themselves into melodies or bits of a verse that hold my attention.  Or there could be a word that strikes me, spawns a few different trains of thought.  Either way, before I know it, I'll be finished.  There was once a whole song that bloomed out of the word "dovetail" in a half-hour.

But there are other times when I carry a little piece of a song in my pocket for a day, a few days, a week.  It is perfectly content to bide its time until it feels ready to blossom.  And then I comb through the finished song, line by line, asking myself questions.  Is that the word I really want?  Does that detail build my picture?  What emotion am I left with here?  These questions are easy, because they're only pruning shears.  They help me to trim things, to make the finished product spare but pretty.

What it comes down to is this: I have both quick days and slower days.  It's important to know the difference.  But the amount of time it takes to put together a song has no bearing on its quality, not for me.  Many say their best work happens when they put the most (or least) time into it.  For me, the more the process takes out of me, the better the song turns out.  For like all worthy endeavors, this labor of love takes infinite patience and a measure of courage.  How?

You must be willing to reach into your mind and lift up an experience.  Shake it, hard.  Shake it until the protective coating - the superficial social smiles, the denial, the song-and-dance routine - falls away.  This is never easy, but there's no point in writing the song, really, if it's empty.  So you peel away layer after layer until all you have left is what you've avoided for so long.  Then, you challenge yourself:

Tell the story.