As I run

Sometimes being here on this campus can be suffocating. I find myself treading the same paths every day, going from Matthews, to Annenberg, to the Science Center, to Lamont, back to the Science Center, to Widener... Harvard's beautiful. It's true (though it took me awhile to see it), and there are days I'll be gazing out at the Yard from my fourth floor window and everything just feels so right. But then there are other days when the wind penetrates all the layers of wool and synthetic fiber I swath myself in, days when I walk with my eyes trained on the ground before me, navigating around puddles and packs of Asian tourists. Back home I could jump in my car when I felt the urge and just go somewhere new, somewhere undiscovered that I could harbor in my mind as my own. Here, there's less freedom to do that. I'm tethered to my daily schedule and the constraints of this campus. I went out into the great wide world, intending to escape Tennessee and smallness and the insignificance of suburban life, and here I am, marooned on a grandly appointed island in a world I wish were smaller.

So I go on runs just like I would do back home. I run at night when the air is chilly and every darkened thoroughfare feels like an invitation, a mystery to be resolved. As I run, I feel my world broadening, its edges peeling back like tin foil sloughing off good, dark chocolate. I run by places I've never been, letting my feet remember the texture of the pavement, the give of the grass, and as I run these new places establish themselves in my geographic memory. They become a part of my tiny little world, brought finally into the light. When next I run, I may return along that way again, letting the places gain familiarity in my mind. Eventually, I've made myself a route, and my body knows without direction where to go.

When I run the motion itself is uninhibited, effortless. I've been a runner for as long as I can remember. I like how running turns the world into a blur, how it heightens the senses... slows down time. My mind always drifts off when I run. I think about my day, what I ate, who I talked with. I think about all sorts of random things that I can't remember later. It's like a dream in that sense, airy and nebulous and infuriatingly brief. When I run, I loosen the underpinnings of memory, and what spills forth, I leave well enough alone. Eight years of running have taught me by now to never stop. Don't run (or remember) in circles. Don't turn back  unless you have too.