I’m distracted and fragmented. My mind is all over the place. I imagine myself as some figure made from magnetic filaments who is pulled first in one direction and then another, particles trailing in the wake of the latest magnetic tug.
My running clothes are still there on the floor, where I left them last night. I told myself I would head out as soon as I woke up, but I had a disrupted night’s sleep and coffee was all I could think about this morning. The pile of brightly coloured kit taunts me from the corner of the bathroom, pestering me to get dressed and get moving.
It’s almost dusk when I finally capitulate. I feel like I am gathering puddles of myself from here and there, scooping the bits together until I fill out the snug contours of the runner’s uniform. Even so, the centre is vacuous; something is missing.
I make my way into the gathering gloom, legs heavy, struggling to find my rhythm. For a while I think of turning back, of giving up. The street is littered with these flyaway parts of me - thoughts and feelings, obligations and concerns, comparisons and fears. All chasing me, trying to catch up, to cling on.
Demands, responsibilities, concerns. They cling; they pull. Distractions, an overload of stimulation that thins me out. My soul yearns for something robust enough to hold me in all of this; something still enough and quiet enough to hush the inner noise.
Somehow, as my body shakes down into this rhythmic pavement beat, my thoughts and feelings do too. There is some kind of drawing together, the centre becomes once again sufficiently weighty to hold all the disparate pieces - not in a way that makes sense but in a way that has form.
When stillness is illusive and silence hard to find, give me a pair of running shoes and I'll pound my way into a settledness for my soul.
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