Six Miles

There's been a lot in the media this week, on the seventh-year anniversary of 9/11. I remembered this post on my personal blog, and though many of my friends and much of my life has changed dramatically since then, this still means something to me. Oh, and I don't like capital letters. Not because I'm lazy, but it's a rhythm thing and a smoothness thing. Anyway.


at 7:45 this morning, i closed the door behind me, and didn't lock it. i've tried in the past to be a morning runner, without any successful consistency, but recently, cooler mornings beckoned and busier evenings pressed.

i was a bit disappointed to find it was still somewhat warm, and definitely as humid as ever, but i went down the stairs and started to run. traffic moved, but it was quiet. it struck me that i was lucky to not have to be at work at eight in the morning. i've been lucky like that before...

five years and one minute earlier, i was as oblivious as anyone as to how the world was about to change. it's become cliche to talk about how the world changed, and maybe there's something purely sentimentalist to think that much changed, in the long, big scheme of things.

but we all know better. life moved on, but something in our minds had changed, for a multitude of reasons, but paramount among them, for the mere shock, the impact of something very large and very real happening.

by 9:02 this morning, i had covered almost a couple of miles, and was moving down past the school, towards zilker park. a couple on bikes nodded as they passed me, pedaling slowly and sedately. an older man in suspenders and a hat watched approvingly as sprinklers gently showered his lawn.

five years earlier, my then-girlfriend chandra yelled. i was in another room of her townhome, waiting to drive us to work. the t.v. was on in the bedroom, and she was standing there, staring.
i came in, moments before 8:03am, 9:03 at tower two, and along with the rest of the world, i saw the horrible punctuation mark at the end of the pre-9/11 world punctuated again.

i ran down barton springs road this morning, past the traffic stacking up to go to work and school, and i thought about how real it had all felt that morning, but yet how unreal it felt later, when we began to realize why it had happened. the reality of death and pain had sprung from things that man has created, artificial things - politics, money, religion that parodies and defiles spirituality, governments and policies that with agendas other than peace and the betterment of humanity.

i got through three miles, and turned south onto lamar boulevard, for the last two miles of my run, a long, uphill grind. i slowed to a walk for a few seconds, then gathered myself and began to run again, metering my breaths, timing them with the cadence of my footfalls.

politics, war, business, most of our jobs for that matter... they're only real because we've made them things that characterize our existence, but they're not essentially or necessarily part of who we are - they're constructs humanity has made up to meet other ends, and often to poorly fill sad little holes in our existence.

running, though, is real. it was there at our beginning, out of need, but i have to imagine that even early humans enjoyed how it felt to move quickly across the earth, maybe to race their friends, or maybe just for the hell of it.

one of my coaches was unabashedly sentimental today, saying he was going to toast all of us tonight, "in honor of our way of life and thanks that we are able to be free to do what we love - run."

i finished the run, went to work, and all day i was reminded of how unreal so much of our world is. business mangles language to create the salable illusion of meaning. our legal system is not about justice, but more a parody of itself, too often a tool better wielded by the powerful than the just.

too many of us, too often, are children, playing at make-believe with monopoly money and making up magic words, while what's real in ourselves, and the world around us, languishes, sometimes dies.

after work, i went to happy hour with my running friends. we toasted those who had raced over the weekend, whether they won, or simply competed. the meaningless portion of my day was bookended by my friends, and by my own footsteps in the morning, and today, it all meant even more to me than before.