runner

My running route is a well trodden path so I cannot say what exactly drove me to leave it that grey morning so long ago. I can only endeavor to describe the ordeal so that it might save another runner the anguish it has caused me. Let me begin with the closing of my apartment door at the age of 26; I can say at this point the mania had not yet overcome me as I still carried a key with which to return. The first mile seemed benign, though I slipped and skittered my way towards the river. What happened next betrays an otherworldly illness which I will not attempt to explain.

When I reached the river I did not stop to turn around as a healthy man might. Instead, I stopped and stared into an undulating, swollen body of water whose argent surface returned no reflection. My conscious mind told me that to enter and slip below the current would mean death in minutes, not hours. Yet I waded in anyway, feeling an electric numbness anesthetize my skin. I don't believe anyone saw this fruitless rebellion but if they had the last sight would have appeared suicidal. I simply walked. I walked until the water filled my nose and mouth, until my eyes stung with the salty runoff and my hair waved gently backwards buffeted by the eddies around the shore. I was not done running.

Slowly, arduously, I planted my feet and pushed against the silty bottom to make my way upstream. I heaved past a downtown that hadn't recovered from my generation's first calamity. I passed this impoverished city that wants so badly to be more than it is. I passed visions of pastoral capitalism and cubicles and frigid parking garages. Through the monolithic locks and dams I blazed a sandy, underwater trail northward because no alternative occurred to me. When the river began to dwindle I found myself at the quiet shores of the headwater, the campgrounds still resting in winter repose before the next idyllic spring.

This miracle did not register. I wasn't done running. I continued down hastily paved trails where asphalt blended into the grass. I ran along side the ceaseless highways to the port city of an even colder body of water and did not stop. I cut myself on the jagged ice as I pushed into and through the crystalline water, sinking deeper into my second abyss. The first paled in comparison to this fathomless depth, but this time the bottom offered a hard surface. Worn shoes found purchase and I made good progress. I emerged after a week submerged in a new country. It has here, on this ancient, basalt shore that I realized my northward trajectory would not provide what I needed. I was running out of room. The sun pierced the horizon and I turned to it.

My body, now sodden and wrinkled, was heavy. Engorged skin split softly as I lumbered through the last of my continent pausing only briefly to peer into the worn establishments. Their cozy and inviting interiors offered no respite for I was only an interloper and the worst was yet still to come. The mild relief from easing back into the icy brine gave way to a terrible resignation at the great journey ahead. I sank, ears popping, down the pelagic zone following the contours of the continental shelf.

When this too came to an end and I found myself in a vast and lightless desert. The pressure here stiffened my joints until I could barely move but panic drove me to the opposite inclination; I lost myself here. Blind, stumbling, my mind crumbled in the complete absence of stimuli. When I finally tripped and fell face first into the benthic ooze my first reaction was complete terror; when I found the offending object, a piece of my mind returned once more. Palpitating blindly in the inky blackness I found a smooth object extending further into the abyss. Hand over hand, I hauled myself along this newfound lifeline until, almost imperceptibly, the floor tilted against the slight sensation of gravity and light once again filtered down to my weary eyes.

I released the cable once my vision returned and swam upward. What was left of my clothes had long ago disintegrated and I emerged on that sunbaked coast naked. I could no longer run, but I walked a painful, uneven gate until I recovered. This stage blends together in my mind; I am not sure I can separate the details nor arrange them chronologically. I remember great cities of stone and glass; castles, boats, and mountainous passes that broke my spirit and burned my skin. There is a distinct period of intense, jungle heat and that steamy vapor clung even as I plunged back into that horrid ocean.

A deep depression, both metaphorical and geographical, pervaded me then. Conditions were no different than before, but even in my exhaustion I was aware that it would be my longest trip yet. I receded into a corner of my mind and watched. Somehow I was still moving. Relief and deception in the form of seamounts; prismatic corals sheltered exotic creatures; the sensation of disbelief as the continental shelf loomed once again. I climb, accelerating. I am picking up speed through the southwest, arms extending, chest pumping, I am finally sprinting. It isn't clear where the finish line is. I feel my thinning hair and look down at my sagging skin and skeletal form; suddenly, the route snaps into place and becomes familiar. I find myself on the loop I started that winter morning so long ago and I am not sure if I ever really left. ▣