Waiting To Explode
I’m discontented in a way that lacks content, which makes it redundant, so I’ll write. I think I want to fuck something. Don’t you?
Or eat something or drink something or sob while I tell someone all my fears and secrets. I feel blurry. I’m formless colors like the person who moves in a photograph, caught between this and that, or a Pollock dripped and splashed on the floor when Jack was drunk and angry.
This is not as black and white lonely man slow song with an acoustic guitar as it might sound. I know what’s wrong with me. I’m just a dog on a leash who needs to run.
It’s been a lot of hard work getting ready and tonight, at midnight, I’m going to run 50K through the desert. For American people, for people who refuse to convert to a much more logical and convenient system of measurement because it somehow threatens both the Constitution and the solidarity of Christendom, that’s 31 miles. Right now, I’m supposed to stay off my feet, hydrate, and eat lots of carbs, which sounds simple enough but it’s not when you’re a bomb waiting to explode.
So I bite my thumbnail, wavering between confidence and doubt and just wanting to hear someone scream GO! so I can at least begin to succeed or fail. I know I can run 15, 20, 25 miles. But my mind keeps dwelling on that last 6 (or, for not America, roughly 10K). I’ll want to quit. Everything will hurt. I’ll see my dead friends. Skip will talk to me like Ben Kenobi talks to Luke when he nearly freezes to death on Hoth. I’ll ask myself why I do these crazy things and I still won’t know. This not knowing will bleed into hearing Lou Reed sing “And I guess that I just don’t knowww.”
If I were a 50K race director, I would put heroin at the 40K aid station. Gatorade’s good but it’s not that good.
A provisional answer to not knowing might be that I’ve always wanted to be something else. Someone else. More than I am. Remember in Dead Poet’s Society when Knox Overstreet had the sax and he—alive with poetry—said “Wanna do more. Wanna feel more. Wanna BEEE morrrrrre.”? I love that part. Or maybe I actually want to be less. Less substantial. Less static. Less of a thing, you know? Don’t you ever get tired of being a thing? (I bet you do.)
I just wrote myself into my new answer to the question “Why do you run so much?”. I’ll shrug and say “I just get sick of being a thing.” So, early tomorrow morning, when there’s 10K to go and I can’t possibly run another step, I’m going to strike a match, light myself on fire, and limp between the crease of who I think I am.
Start anew.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Reader Comments (25)
Good luck, hon. Can't wait to hear who you meet in the dark, in the desert, after the wall :)
You might not realize this, but way back in the day when MamaPop did their own Biggest Loser, you inspired me to start running. I'll (hopefully) run my first half-marathon in Vegas this December. You may not be trying to inspire but you are all the same. All the luck and fire and strength today, especially that last 10K.
Set it on fire, BHJ.
Read Jill Homer - http://arcticglass.blogspot.com/2011/08/book-roundup.html. She may feed your fire, a bit, at least the endurance sports part.
Awesome. I'll be pulling for you!
I reckon that you'll be feeling transcendental by the 40K mark. Good luck.
Waving my flag of support from all the way across the Pacific.
I feel that way too lately. Are you saying that running will help? Because I tried it once and I just felt itchy and also tired. It didn't seem like that much of an improvement.
Run good, man, run good.
If you had smack at the 40k aid station, you wouldn't finish.
Power on.
Run like Forrest Gump when he realized he could run.
Good luck. Although I think insane people who choose to run a 31K don't really need the luck. I admire you.
Awesome post! Rock it out in the desert, man. This runner (training for my first marathon) wants to know how it goes and will look forward to any words you may write about your experience.
You got this.
Kill it, BHJ.
BHJ. This is why I love you - that you let out that you feel this way. You, sir, are a man. I've read you for a long time, since the days of wind, and everything I have heard you and all wise fools say culminated last week in my own wild run away from home hitchhiking with another desert prophet. I met him in a Starbucks. We began a conversation that lasted a week. This handsome homeless anarchist stayed with me for three days before we thumbed our way from California's central deadness to Portland's shade. The first night, he laid his huge hand on my naked throat and let it rest there. My friends said, "You're crazy." I said, "You're right." My friends said, "This is a very dangerous decision." I said, "So is a life without risks."
Our days were consumed with finding food, shade, and isolated places to fight with each other as our intellects wrestled. He was a man made of messages about the fate of all life, humanity's inherent creaturehood, and our need to be initiated, to face death before we can truly care about the fate of our fellow creature. A literal prophet, he would tell these things to anyone who would listen. He stuck a finger in the face of my pretense. He excoriated my nice-girl reserve as the falsehood that it was: an excuse not to take any risks, an excuse not to piss anyone off, so that I would never be noticed and never have to fight or be rejected. And after the final transmission, after all our savage biting, after I told him what I'd wanted to all week and said "Fuck your noise," only then our minds met and we said that we loved each other. We said it again and again and again, and now I can say it to you because that's how I feel about your mind. I want you to fuck something. I want you to run and vomit on Skip's misty shoes. Because then I know I still can too.
Everyone has tried to therapize me since I came back. Yeah, sure, there's probably some subconscious parent-child bullshit here but sometimes a risky move is just a fucking leap for leap's sake. Thank you, thank you, for telling the truth. I don't want to be just a thing either. Jivey, corny, I don't fucking care any more because you're the only one I've ever heard that gets it I'm scared of what I learned because it means I can't ignore who I am any more and I can't conscript into the khaki and polo mob for the price of my soul. Not that I wanted to. But these experiences have a way of ridding you of false refuges. Thank you BHJ for your words along the way and I love you. Go easy, step lightly, stay free.
Right now it's almost time for The Running and I imagine you pinning on your number, all coiled on the inside and your brain running, running, running, waiting for your body to hear the signal and catch up.
Here's to high spirits, low lactic acid and no rattlers (real or imagined) to stumble you. Godspeed. I'm proud of you.
You done by now BHJ? Hmmm.
And holy crap, litmiss. Beautiful.
Hope everything goes OK, I would love to be able to run that much, I can only run the 10K, so maybe when you are in the 40K aid station, you can just stay there to rest, and I can start and finish the race for you :). ?
Just an idea.
Good luck, and thanks for the nice piece of article.
I see on Twitter that you did it! Way to go, dude.
The Ironman triathlon is in Penticton at the the end of August every year. I vote that you train for that and everybody comes up here to cheer you on. Just a thought. :)
Damn straight.
You're done by now. I'm dying to know how you did.
I love that place. That place where all that fills the mind is stopping, but the body keeps moving.
litmiss - holy fuck.
how do you write this stuff? i don't know how, but god i am so glad you do.
Congrats, sir. I can't even wrap my brain around the conversion, so it's quite apparent that 50km, or 31m would cause a stroke. And then there's that heart condition. The question that comes to mind most about the whole post is whether something a little more ... effort-giving would be a better enhancement at the 40-line. Maybe some dust? The desert, after surpassing the wall, wet. That actually might be a little too Gonzo, actually. I dunno. Smack seems like poor project planning.
By the way, I'm pretty sure it was Tawanda that played the sax.
I would really love to read some fantastical love letters between you and litmiss. Your words melt so well, it's as if I've just read someone's stack of ribboned papers. In a manner not resembling Bram Stoker's Dracula, that is.
Catching up on my Reader... I wondered how things went for you -- just read your tweets. Sounds like I can say congratulations! Sorry you had a rough few miles at the end. I've been trail racing the past couple of years -- two single-track marathons at elevation [for me], and a few 16-20 mile trail races. Nothing's worse than a bonk at the end...or falling. I can't believe you started in the middle of the night. Start your next 50k in the morning. Congratulations, again. Incredible accomplishment!
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