The Running

The Running

Monday, March 18th

• We are doing it again. The Running. The Well-Meaning Drift. 80 Miles Per Hour but still wheel spinning. We are going to pack our condensed lives into a mini van and drive from here to where the highways end. The Last Frontier. So far away it makes Maine look neighborly. We are going because we’ve always wanted it, to know, and to be, just how far away we can get. We are going because we can, because we are lucky or blessed or whatever it is we call grateful these days. We are going because it is in our blood, maybe not mine or hers, but OUR blood has always been running. Not to beat a Deadhorse, but this time will be different. We are not running away, but finally towards something. Towards wanting. Towards the last pin on the map. Towards love and adventure and seeing, it all, clearly. Bright eye and bushy tail, the bounty too beautiful for me to try and make pretty.  We will drive from the Lone Star to the Arctic Circle or we will LIVE trying. We are doing it again. The Running.

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Monday, March 25th

• Today, the chest feels tight. Held unwillingly like a good hug gone too long. The body today, is a scare tactic. A fearful way of holding space. Today, I am uncomfortable with wanting too much. With wanting to make something of this tension. Can’t we just let it go? Learn to exhale, slow, instead of spitting up poems. Why must I always make pretty what is blasé, normal people shit. Why I gotta lipstick every piglet in the barn house? Why I gotta doll up all my heartbreak for the internet? Why I gotta call feelings heartbreak? Can’t it just be bliss to kiss the second-hand on every clock in the cuckoo bin? Can’t we just feel something, honest, and let it be whole? Do we need to keep picking for blood? Do we need to peel the fruit to love it? Do we?

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Monday, April 1st

• After “three happy days” I feel less convinced of our grandiose adventure. Less certain we contain the conviction necessary to carry through with it, with all the trudging. Somehow our dreams always seem just out of reach. Close enough to claw at, but too far to get a grip on. It feels like we can only muster enough want to get the ball rolling, but where it rolls and what it becomes is out of our control. Maybe it feels like this, because this is what a dream is, by definition, something ethereal just out of reach. Any dream that can be bagged and tagged is not big enough to call itself such. No dream I’ve ever awoken from could fully fit inside my waking mind. All logic and reason wiped from sleepy eyes. Only instinct and mouthfeel capable of conjuring what worlds we call dreams. If we let our waking life set the limits of what we are capable of dreaming we will always be disappointed, always restricted, always sold short for what is possible to achieve. If our dream to drive to Alaska doesn’t feel impossible then Alaska isn’t far enough. The trick to achieving ones dreams, is simple, keep dreaming it bigger, keep stretching and reaching for what others deem unattainable. Want what others have decided isn’t worth having, or possible to obtain, and you will find yourself 80 miles down the road before you realize you’re going for it. If you want a life of adventure, you must leave your old life behind, for now, you must be willing to let go that which grounds you, you must become comfortable sleeping-in in order to dream something improbable.

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Monday, April 15th

• Two weeks later and now I know we aren’t going. Not this year, again. Even after all my poetic waxing, I still wane away from the highway call answering these questions in one breath. I still doubt the open road could ever hold a tune without an open heart. I still doubt that Texas is big enough to hold me happy-homesick forever, but I will stretch until there is no doubting left of us. I still doubt happiness as a healthy metric, but here I am measuring like I know which end to begin with. I doubt these things, because I know the medicine of the bucket seat, the magic of the rearview mirror, and everyone that knows you too far receding to see or sing along with whatever song the highway hums. I know what healing feels like measured in miles and though it ain’t always what its cracked up to be, it sure is fast and thorough. I know the Running is only one solution to the static. I know that hearing and listening and knowing are only stepping stones to being here and being here is a whole poem on its own. I know Rest Stops are a type of church to me. A third place I feel real comfortable in, full of hungry people looking for something simple enough to hum along to. For caffeine, nicotine, or sunflower seeds. The choir of the urinal cake and ever-rolling hotdog. Or sometimes it’s just this county’s last Hello, the quiet nod of the fellow runner nearing home. I know we don’t always know when rest becomes sloth. When running is courage and staying is fear. When being here now is too late or too small. We don’t always know, but we do listen, and we hear, and we Run.