Day 288

Autumn carpet.

Molly and I ran 3.5 miles (5.63km-woohoo!) in 45 minutes, which was just under eight minutes per km, 7.59, exactly!  This is the furthest I have ever run, and it was almost effortless.  Well, not quite, but I got my rhythm back, everything was in sync, how it is sometimes, so occasionally.  But lovely when it happens. 

I think I love running most in the cold weather, running through the cool damp air, slight drizzle, icy arms and ears and cheeks, but underneath the surface, the hot blood pumping through the pipes, the beautiful breath swishing in and out, the exhilaration of the blue-shod feet balancing it all.

Amazing how the mind works, that multi-thought stream of consciousness.  While I am running, I am singing my rhythm-song: Land of the Silver-Birch, Home of the Beaver, where still the mighty moose, wanders at will, Blue Lake and Rocky Shore, I will return once more, Boom-diddy-ah-di, Boom-diddy-ah-di, Boom-diddy-ah-di, Boom. And on and on with more verses.  And at the same time I am counting my breathing, which at times, like going uphill, needs to be counted so that it continues evenly, otherwise sometimes it panics.  Simultaneously, (I suppose all these different streams are like the tributaries of the one great mind-river), I am thinking of a radio programme I heard about literary tattoos, where people have their favourite song-lines, or bits of poetry or prose, tattooed on them, instead of the usual images or single words.

And I begin to think what I would like to have, if I were to choose something to put on my body forever, well, until I die.  So I think about all the poetry that I have loved in my life, try to recall poems I have learned by heart, or bits from those I don't know in their entirety.  Poetry has been a grand passion since I was a small child, the lilting sounds of rhyming words, the beautiful imagery of strange words juxtaposed.  I remember learning my brother's poem that he had to learn by heart when I wasn't even at school yet, and I can still dredge up pieces of that poem, about mad dogs, like "I'm a rough dog, a tough dog, teasing silly sheep, I love to bay the moon at night, to keep fat souls from sleep." 

Thinking about poetry, I am rushed back to Grahamstown in the mid-70's, when I first arrived at university.  And it all takes place under a golden light.  It seemed to me that everything could be understood, it was effortless, words meant so many things, and there was a wonderful clarity to everything I read.  I could analyze each poem perfectly, I knew what the poet was thinking, was saying.  And then I grew a little older, a little wiser, and the golden afternoon withered away, and comprehension only came with much thought and agonising.

So there are many poets that I love, to name but a few: Sharon Olds, Stanley Kunitz, the three poets of The Mersey Sound, Vallejo, Neruda, and I could go on and on.  But finally I decided that Dylan Thomas would be the one, and although I love the poem Fern Hill, and thought about the ending: Time held me green and dying/Though I sang in my chains like the sea, as a possibility, I think it is the end of "Do not go gentle..." that I would have, tattooed around my calf and ankle going down on to my foot:  Do not go gentle into that good night/Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.