I’m up to 126 miles this month. I should be at 150. My lungs are coming back. As evidence of this, I managed to squeak a sub-8 three mile run. I wish I could drop about eight more pounds. I have a race tomorrow. Every pound counts.
I ran at night. It’s boring, a trifle dangerous. When I run through neighborhoods, people on their porches stare at me as I pass. I see their silhouettes. Their heads turning slowly in the darkness, sometimes the earthy aroma of a grape-flavored blunt floats gently above the sidewalk. Nobody says hello. That’s okay. It’s not like I’d stop to chat. I never see people walking, running, playing, nothing. I know in the early evening people like to go for strolls (I’ve seen it, I’ve read about it), and it would be different to be strolling here and there, chatting to people.
“Oh hello, Jebadiah.”
“Hey buddy, whatchoo up to?”
“Oh, I popped down to the library, researched the minutes of the Old Redstone and Providence Meeting Houses, to see what the Quakers called social life. Seems like all they cared about were who was fucking who, although occasionally they were trying to ruin someone’s life and drive them from their group for dancing and drinking, which was funny since they saw now reason to quit milling grain for distillation. Above all else, they liked working and making money, buying land, and making more money. So, money, less fucking and distractions, that’s rather Puritanical. Women had it bad, historically.
I’m going to an old chapel rebuilt from the blocks of an ancient Meeting House tomorrow night to take photos at dawn, a 14 mile bike ride, do the shots, followed by an 18 mile sprint to a race in Uniontown, a 5k. Members of my family are possibly buried there, the high hill where I’m doing the photo shoot, Pages, who were, for the most part, kicked out of the Quakers groups and allowed to return after accepting their moral weaknesses for fighting in wars, fucking, dancing, drinking, and doing other passionate things. They were basically the family most ill-equipped to be Quakers, but strangely, allowed back into the group, no doubt owing to their industrious character. Among the families I researched, mine were the most hot-blooded, most poorly behaved. As a matter of fact, I’m thinking about fucking and dancing at the same time at this very moment. And you?”
Blandly, breath escaping, “TV show, maybe spark plug truck thing. Don’t like government. And racist joke, perhaps.”
“Grand, simply grand. Well, gotta go.”
Anyways, I’m interested in getting my speed back. I don’t expect I’ll place in my age group (M 40-44) tomorrow. I’ll be pushing a jogging stroller (stupid name, should be called a jogging pram). “Oh I’m taking the baby for a walk run, and then maybe I’ll sit sleep.” I am going to a reportedly haunted location in the middle of the night to shoot footage. My wife is asking me why I’m doing this, she questions my sanity. Sanity is so over-rated.
I’m bored. I need adventure, I need challenges, calamity, the promise of unknown outcomes. I also need to move to a town. I’m not kidding: the only thing that has been built here in two years is a public latrine next to a duck pond, a place for people to defecate while they go frog gigging. That’s not enough! Once that park is fracked, the toilet will be forever silent. Brownsville, quite a running joke.
Fifty State Banana 