Okay. So, I have to be honest: I haven’t run seriously since the Richmond Marathon, back in November. I mean, yes, I ran with TNT when I coached the Monument 10K, but that was close enough after Richmond that I didn’t really need to train; I just ran with them as my personal level of fitness declined. And declined. Since I moved to Hampton (anyone who is out of the loop - I moved to Hampton, I’m going back to school for Radiography, and…yeah that’s it), I’ve run three times. In five weeks. It’s been bugging me. Today, though, I decided I would go running, and not just a stalling tactic as my gut bulges more and more, but as the first step on my new (again) path to fitness and, eventually, another marathon. In short, I ran, and it was great. I saw a ton of bunnies, and five or six muskrats swimming in a nearby canal, and the clouds and the sky were awesome and I had fun. So, you know, success. Oh, and also, I’m back on Tumblr. At least right now at this here very moment in time.
Begin with a healthy handful of clay. In much the same manner as a drill instructor breaks down a recruit in order to build him back up, stronger and more deadly than ever, roll, smack, intimidate and shape your clay into an approximation of a sphere, releasing your own tension and aggression as you do. The smoother and more accurately round your beginning blob, the easier your pot will form, and the cooler you will appear to your friends. Next, with the angry fire of a thousand suns, jam your thumb into the ball of clay, using a violent twisting motion to work the digit deeper into the near-solid mass. Do not carve a hole through the entire ball of clay; stop just shy of emerging from the other side, unless you’re intending for your pinch pot to suck. In a series of tiny, vaguely OCD motions, pinch the sides opposite your thumb, using your remaining four fingers, rotating the clay as you do so. Do this over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Continue until boredom, fatigue and zen states ensue. You will know it is time to stop, not by touch (your fingers will long since have gone numb), but by sight. Keep your fledgling pinch pot in sight AT ALL TIMES. Leave a little extra clay at the outer edge, for formation of the rim. When the sides of the pot (or is it just one side, since it’s round?) are of the desired thickness, you can begin smoothing the inside and out with your finger, using a gentle rubbing motion. Clay is made up of extraordinarily unstable and unhealthy-if-ingested substances, so for the sake of your own safety, do not smooth your pinch pot with your tongue or lips. Do not eat your pinch pot. Shape the rim of the pot (with your fingers). Finally, with a firm, deliberate, assertive motion, grasp your newly completed pinch pot in your hand. Admire it for not less than nine, but not more than fourteen, seconds and then squish it into an unrecognizable mess. Repeat.
So I was gazing up at the mountain this morning when my attention was distracted by the clouds passing behind the massive peak. It was a breezy day, and my sweaty t-shirt was being plastered against my back by the stirring air, feeling in turns refreshing and stiflingly hot.
What had caught my attention was a shape in the clouds, a stylized, inverted T, which my imagination immediately transformed into-
“A ship,” spoke a voice behind my left shoulder. I turned, startled, to see a girl, probably a few years younger than I, gazing up at the same cloud formation, drifting past the rocky mount.
“It’s a sailing ship,” she repeated, and I nodded, not knowing what else to say. WIthout another word, the girl turned and walked away up the cobbled sidewalk. I watched her retreating form, then turned back to the mountain and the sailing cloud-ship.
I stared, lost in thought, my mind taking me on a voyage aboard that ship, sailing far far away, across the sea, to new lands never before seen. Still, in all my imaginings, that mountain remained in the foreground, partially obscuring my view of the fantastic places I was visiting in my mind.
I’d never really given much thought to the mountain before, never wondered how the town came to be built around it, nor how it came to exist in such a flat expanse, the only uneven feature for miles. I’d never climed to the top of the plateau, despite my many years living here. I decided to change that.
There are stairs carved into the heavy black rock of the mountain, many many stairs, and my resolve weakened as I climbed, and climbed, and climbed still higher. My legs ached and shook as they struggled to continue supporting my weight, sweat ran freely down my face, and my clothes were growing uncomfortably tight as they clung to my body. Finally, though, I reached the pinnacle, and looked around to see what I’d been missing all these years.
Nothing. Nothing at all. An open space, with a few stunted, twisted trees around the edges, that was all. People came up here all the time, I knew, but for this? I was too tired to head back down right away, so I sat in the middle of the clearing, and looked back up at the clouds.
At first, I thought I’d become dehydrated, and was hallucinating. Then I thought perhaps I was asleep, more exhausted than I’d thought, from my climb. Neither was true. There was no denying it: the cloud I’d watched, the cloud shaped like a mighty sailing ship, had been replaced by a real ship, floating above me in the air, creaking and rocking as though it sat upon the water. My mouth hung open, and my eyes stung. I couldn’t blink.
“It’s a ship,” said a familiar voice behind me. I jumped. I’d not heard anyone ascending the stairs after me, but was not at all surprised to see the girl from before standing at the edge of the dirt, her bare feet situated atop two tufts of soft-looking grass.
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, it’s a ship,” I replied, feeling no less stunned by having spoken the words aloud.
“We should go,” said the girl. At first, I had no idea what she was talking about, but then I noticed a ladder made of rope and wood had descended from the side of the ship above us, and was now dangling a few feet above my head.
“We - go?”
The girl didn’t bother repeating herself. She walked over to the ladder, grabbed the third rung from the bottom - the highest rung she could reach - and with a small hop, put both her feet on the last rung and began to climb. She looked down at me every few steps, but I still hadn’t moved.
Go with her? On a wooden ship floating in the sky? It was preposterous, crazy, unbelievable. And yet… A reckless curiosity tickled at the back of my mind. Was this real? Or was a delusional? Was I, even now, sitting at home in bed, dreaming, or was I wandering the streets, rambling and incoherent?
But I, of all people, knew: adventures often begin with questioning one’s motives and justification. You have to take a chance, or your adventure will end up as nothing more than another ordinary day. I didn’t know the girl, had never seen her before. I had never seen, or heard of, a flying boat, and was, in all likelihood, mistaken in some way, either by injury or insanity or illness. Still…
I wanted an adventure. I wanted to disappear over the horizon, to explore, to find…something. Slowly, I rose to my feet and grasped the ladder. The girl, far above me now, was just slipping her leg over the side of the ship. She glanced down one last time, saw me holding the ladder, and although she was far above me, I am certain I saw her smile. Well, here was an adventure, staring me in the face.
I started to climb…
by Martin Steingesser
… awoke to rain
around 2:30 this morning
thinking of you, because I’d said
only a few days before, this
is what I wanted, to lie with you in the dark
listening how rain sounds
in the tree beside my window,
on the sill, against the glass, damp
cool air on my face. I am loving
fresh smells, light flashes in the
black window, love how you are here
when you’re not, knowing we will
lie close, nothing between us; and maybe
it will be still, as now, the longing
that carries us
into each other’s arms
asleep, neither speaking
least it all too soon turn to morning, which
it does. Rain softens, low thunder, a car
sloshes past.
I am rediscovering how to run alone.
In recent weeks, I had lost this ability. The unaccompanied pounding of my feet on the pavement, the thoughts occupying my brain, all the things I was running to escape would conspire against my forward motion, stealing my air and burning my muscles. Inevitably, these recent solo runs would end with me walking home, panting and irritated, having accomplished nothing, not resolving the issues rattling around in the space occupied by my head, not feeling properly exercised, nothing. Just panting and irritated, having covered a mere fraction of the mileage I regularly complete when running with a partner.
This past weekend, though, something changed, miraculously and for the better. I was camping at Virginia Beach with some friends, and had just spent a long night sporadically ocsillating between sleep and half-wakefulness, as the persistent rain continued into the dark and the tent’s rain-fly proceeded to fail, dropping random plops of cold rainwater onto my face, neck, chest, ear. I rose, tired but unable to continue sleeping, and decided to go for a jog.
Wearing borrowed, hot-pink running shorts, I made my way to our semi-private stretch of beach, bordering the anything-but-turbulent Chesapeake Bay. As my feet struck the sand, I kicked into a slow jog, trying to find the best piece of the shoreline on which to run and not pay attention to the looks I was getting from the people around me.
Naturally, I had a lot on my mind. But, as I began my routine of turning my thoughts over and over like a washing machine that doesn’t wash anything, just rolls it around and spits it back out, same as when it went in, my tired brain decided it was going to have none of it. It simply refused to take hold of the thoughts spinning in my mind, and in that refusal, I stumbled on my solution.
A calmness came over my mind, a familiar and long-missed calmness - no, not even calmness, it was more like a blankness. There was no calm, no unrest, there was just me. I realized something I had known, but had forgotten, or disregarded or whatever: that quiet mindspace for which I’d pined, that mindless point where you are both aware and unaware, it is not something you can grasp with your hands. You can’t grab hold of it and pull it towards yourself. You can only open your arms and allow IT to grasp YOU.
