I Keep Running To Be Stable

Thanks to Peter Gabriel for the title of this post which comes from “Sky Blue” off of the Up album. Best watched live with The Blind Boys of Alabama.

My most cogent, straightforward articulations of my spaghetti-twisted thoughts and feelings come when I'm least capable of writing them down and most susceptible to twisting an ankle.

Some people have shower thoughts, others have dish washing thoughts, still others have laundry thoughts. I have run thoughts. On runs, I successfulluy exorcise emotional demons and untangle perplexing life challenges only to find them  resurrect zombie-like almost as soon as I slow to a walk. 

Recently, I've devised a way to capture those demons and their zombie kin for good. Just like reaching for a tissue in anticipation of a sneeze, when I'm out for a run and I feel a thought come on, I reach for my phone and press the mic.

Voice to text while running is clumsy and inherently dangerous. I fumble for my phone in my legging pocket and desperately search for the notes app. Meanwhile, because I’m still running, my phone toggles from vertical to horizontal view. I stubbornly refuse to slow down or come to a walk lest slowing down will expel all of the air out of my thought balloon.

On today's run, a series of thoughts began to coalesce into words and form a story, all fueled by a mixture of happiness and grief about my life this year compared to last year. This time last year I was not running. Instead, I was benched due to an inexplicable onset of heart palpitations. This time last year, I was living on my own, single parenting three boys. But now, my partner and I of five years are finally living together and life feels whole again. This time last year, I had all three of my kids under one roof. This year, I don’t. And, I haven’t yet come to terms with it all.

My pent-up feelings about this last point, an unresolved situation full of sadness, started to knock on the walls of my head, then again, persistently louder and then even louder as my run progressed to the point my breath tightened and a lump formed in my throat. It needed a way out and I was determined to help it escape and escape fast before I imploded. Fumbling for my phone, I breathed deeply so I could manage to talk while running. I pressed record and launched into my story.

I looked down at my phone, minutes later, satisfied to have expelled it all… and breathless. But, my satisfaction turned to surprise and then dismay. Only the first few words I dictated appeared on the screen. The rest of my monologue vanished with my breath. My notes app seemed to be tapping its fingers on the table, waiting impatiently for input not realizing I had just expressed a gallon of grief into its care.

I tried again, repeating the start of my story. It failed again. On the third try, which involved me holding the phone to my mouth, raising my voice and speaking sternly, my phone finally complied and letters then words began to appear. Strangely, this third time around, I felt both greater distance and connection to my thoughts and feelings.  

I slowed to a walk now that my words were down on virtual paper. As I approached a few broken and crumbling sections of sidewalk, I read it back out loud. My eyes passed over the words, abstracted symbols translated into meaning, taking back in that which I had expelled. I felt the impact of my own words anew and sensed a hint of resolution and relief.

Writing down what I think and how I feel, however tangled and twisted, is a peculiar act of self-care uniquely available to humans. Once the words are out of our heads and on a surface, separate and distinct from ourselves, we can interact with and manipulate them and hopefully understand them better. For me, while there isn't always resolution, I usually experience some degree of relief and almost always there is some new insight or way forward that is revealed.  

That is what I hope to do here with my blog: whether composed while running, walking or sitting (that happens for me too!), I hope to write some stories and share some thoughts that offer resolution, relief, insight, and a new way forward. And, perhaps in doing so, others might be encouraged or inspired to wrangle and wrestle with and maybe even untangle their own spaghetti-twisted thoughts. 

Roundabout

    It was that magic hour: an early October sunset had cast a deep periwinkle hue on the cloudless sky that twirled overhead. Below, Julio's little body spun, both calmed and enlivened by the dizzying spin of the playground roundabout. He was nestled safely between his aunt's legs which kept him from sliding off the spinning disk as the bigger boys spun them round faster. The two of them lay in the still middle there together gazing upwards, Julio contently sucking on his pacifier while his aunt giggled in his ear. Time slowed to a near stop. 

    That first turn on the roundabout was followed by many more. Invariably, the child pushing the roundabout would lose interest, run off to chase a friend, or be called home by a parent. Without a pusher, Julio, sensing the ride slowing, would kick his legs signaling he wanted more. His aunt would say, "Hang on, Jules, we'll get started again soon." One time, when the leg flailing failed yet again to elicit more delightful turns, he initiated a new ritual: he tightly shut his eyes and wished hard, imagining the roundabout spinning under that twilight sky. Just then, a child showed up with an inviting sing-song call, "Wanna push?" It was in that singular moment that Julio recognized his superpower. As is the way with so many childhood superstitious associations that tie unrelated causes to outcomes, Julio used his superpower to exert control over his world so often that he could be seen closing his eyes in the store, at school, in front of the TV, and Christmas morning. 

    By the time he was a teenager, that groove became so deep and so well-worn that while he had outgrown the roundabout ride, he retained the notion that if he wished hard enough for something, it would come true. Mind over matter for Julio was a reality. 

    Until it wasn't. One afternoon, after school, he found his mother in the kitchen with a letter in her hand, a foreclosure notice from the bank. "Son, it's about our home," she said despondently, "I mean the house." They wouldn't be able to live there anymore, she explained. They would have to move out and find a new place to live. She took a deep breath and then broke the next piece of news: he would have to live with his father temporarily.

    It couldn't be. It made no sense. His mother and her family had raised him, not his father. He didn't even know his father; couldn't even recall his face. Only one dim memory of him remained from when his father came back hoping to make things right with his mother. They had taken Julio to the playground believing that if they pretended they were a family, they might actually become one. Any plan for reconciliation must have soured because within a matter of minutes, Julio who had just started spinning on the roundabout heard his mother's voice. "Time to go!" She was scowling. He saw her turn away and walk briskly toward the house. His father meandered off to the side heading in a different direction. Julio rolled off the spinning roundabout onto the bouncy playground surface tightly shuting his eyes and wishing his mother to turn around and wait. He stood up, opened them, and shouted, "Wait! I'm coming!" She had waited. And, her face had softened just as he had wished. 

    Now, his mother, 10 years later was sitting at the table with a much older face, telling him it was no use fighting the bank, there was no way out of it, and he'd be living with a stranger, his father. Since her parents had died and her siblings had moved out she hadn't been able to afford the mortgage for months now and was behind on payments. His father had gotten wind of their predicament and had offered to help, hoping to make up for all of it.

    Julio protested, listing every reason he could dream of why the bank couldn't take their home. And then, after watching his mother shake her head too many times, he summoned his magic power. He closed his eyes tight and wished hard, as hard as the baby who wanted the roundabout to keep spinning and as sincere as the little boy who was afraid of being left alone at the playground so long ago. He opened his eyes, hopeful, but this time his mother's face hadn't softened.

    There was nothing left to do but run out the door, across the street, to the playground, towards the roundabout. He sat on one of its three little benches, now too small to support his adolescent frame. The roundabout hadn't moved in years; it had rusted stuck. Just then, a little boy of four rushed up, tapped him on the shoulder, peered into Julio's eyes and said, "Wanna push?" For a moment, Julio felt a familiar sensation, deep inside his body. The twilight sky began to spin and he felt the calm of the centripetal center that came with the predictable motion of the roundabout. 

    He trembled for a moment, then stood up, pointed to the rust on the roundabout, and said to the child, "It don't move no more." The child, with a look of momentary disappointment, considered the fate of the roundabout and tested it by pushing with an audible grunt. When it wouldn't give way, the child shrugged his shoulders and then, smiling as if his disappointment had been picked up and carried effortlessly away by the fall breeze, galloped away.

    Julio walked resolutely back towards the house. Everything felt different. Shuffling along in the fallen leaves, he could sense that there was a new kind of ride, one that was taking a different and unexpected one. Hard wishing with eyes closed tight in earnest was now child's play, a mere fantasy. No matter, he thought. Something within him had settled. The world was now bearing down and crashing in, but the roundabout remained.

Bus Route 42

Written April 21, 2020 by Emma McBean

It's 7:30 am

Nothing new.
Same old route.
I climb up the stairs.
Nod to the bus driver.
My seat is the usual;
three seats down and to the right.
Worn with a tear on the vinyl.
I sit down,
pull my bags up under my chin.
I'm tired still, so I rest my chin on them
It's a twenty minute ride from here to there
The bus stops 15 times before we get there
I am lulled by the rocking motion of the bus
Adrift in my thoughts,
I nearly fall back asleep.
Just then, I'm jolted by the sound of the airbrakes
As the bus pulls up short in front of a stop.
Apparently it almost missed a passenger
Or prospective passenger.
The doors open,
The bus driver mutters an apology.
The figure climbs up the stairs slowly,
Hooded sweatshirt over a baseball cap,
Dirty dark jeans and work boots.
His clothes are larger than the frame
He sits down across from me
And, stares.
He stares at me for two stops.
I'm okay with it until the second stop.
Now I'm uncomfortable.
What is he looking at me for?
Did I forget to wipe something from my face?
Does he know me?
No, there is no recognition on his face.
Three stops go by and he's still staring at me.
Then four then five. I don't know what to do. I look away.
Then finally I stare back.
I'm mad.
How dare he just stare at me with abandon?
I feel violated.
I can't get away.
Should I move?
I've never seen him before.
But maybe just maybe I had seen him before.
Had I slighted him?
I don't always give money to the guys on the street.
I can't tell if he's a "guy on the street" or a guy going to his construction job.
Finally, I lean forward, my mouth barely open.
Just as I'm about to say something.
The bus stops again.
Someone else other than this man had pulled the cord for a stop.
But, his body position changes.
He's preparing to stand up and looks to be getting off.
Finally, Jesus!
Enough with the awkwardness!
As he stands up, I notice his eyes don't remain locked on me in a stare.
No. They just remain level looking ever presently out in front of him.
I shudder with the realization that this person was not and is not seeing me.
He just plain wasn't seeing me!
And quite possibly he wasn't seeing anything or anyone else or at least not clearly enough to recognize what he was looking at.
He may have been staring out ahead of habit, one I might develop if I never wore my glasses and went through my day pretty much half blind.
I do a mental palm to forehead.
I almost bitched this guy out!
Here I was sitting and staring back at someone who could not see me.
And, I confirm this reality now...noticing how he shuffles off the bus.
He's holding on to the backs of seats and the poles
Had he done the same when he got on?
If he had, I hadn't noticed.
He slowly goes down the stairs with the same look in his eyes and on his face as he had when he sat down in front of me.
"Bye-bye Clark," he says to the bus driver.
"Take it easy, John," says the bus driver.
The doors close behind John as he lumbers down the stairs of the bus and heads off into the city.
I shake my head visibly and sigh audibly, suddenly aware that...
What is before us is not always what it appears to be.
What I see is not necessarily what others are.
My world is not THE world.
In this case, I was the blind one.