Relativity

I need to stand up, get dressed and run a nice little half-marathon distance. I don’t really want to do this today. I ran a 5k race yesterday. I am going to the movies later this morning. I have to stop by and see my mom at the physical rehab facility. It’s going to be a busy day after a busy week, after a busy month, after a busy summer, and before another busy week, and I really just want to have a nice, peaceful morning. I’m not sure if my Walkman is working again (it didn’t yesterday) and that’s a long way for me to run without the motivation music gives me, especially a training run.

My daughter, somehow, convinced me to sign up for a trail 25K in two weeks. My shoes are about shot and that style is no longer made and I haven’t been able to find another pair of shoes that works for me. Being a female minimalist in a small town comes with its own problems.

But those problems are nothing to how I’m going to feel in two weeks if I attempt this 15 mile run without having gotten the 13 miles or so under my belt today.
And it’s dark still. Did I mention that? We slide inexorably into autumn after a summer that I lived through but didn’t experience, having slipped out of time chasing everyone else’s problems. Also slipping was my training schedule. That was not my doing and I’ve been trying desperately to regain some of the ground I lost moving people to other states, helping other people pack to move to another state, and sitting, sitting, sitting in hospital emergency rooms, hospital ICUs, hospital rooms, and physical rehab rooms.

And I read that back and feel like a whining little snivel. I have my health, I’m in relatively good shape. None of those hospital stays produced the ‘worst case scenarios’ they so easily could have. I am not hungry and living on the streets. Although not too far above eking by, especially in the face of our advancing ages, I can afford not only to eat & take in the occasional film, but can afford to purchase my daughter the birthday present she wanted. I have a home that needs some work, but is mine; I am not fleeing my homeland in desperation towards the homes of others who don’t want me.

And here I come to what The Dao continuously reminds me : Everything is relative. It is what it is. And what this morning is is a platform for me to train for a run I want to do with my daughter because she asked me to because she needs help meeting her own goals, and because I can.

And on that thought I see the sky begin to pale towards day. The time is now.

Fall

And so it begins. The march into Fall. 

The black walnuts begin the parade as always, dropping their leaves as quickly as they gained them in the Spring. How odd, though, to see the ground littered with brown bodies when the temperature is as hot as it got all season. The air cries “SUMMER!”  But nature whispers “fall”.

Friday night I heard the “gabble ratchet” of wild geese. They were there again last night and this morning, so I am thinking they are gathering in the field by the river, waiting for their friends to join them before they go further. The birdsongs have started to slip from their summer tunes to their travelling tunes. The poison ivy and poison sumac are beginning to blaze red, and Orion is tracking his prey to the south.

 I’ve always loved fall, but this year not so much. This year it feels more like I’ve ticked off one more year without accomplishing anything worthwhile. 

The geese are gathering, the songbird tunes shifting, the leaves changing and dropping and I sit in a trap of my own building and watch the teardrops fall.