run on (for a long time)

{weeping birch shadow out the kitchen window}
{mottled sky}

I can't believe how often I seem to forget how good it is to run, how truly good running is for me. How it's such a good alternative to being trapped in my head, where I spend far too much time -- especially with my job, which accentuates my tendency to overthink, overanalyse, overintellectualize absolutely everything. Sometimes I wonder about all the things I should let myself do, but don't because I'm too busy theorizing about implications & complications & such. It can get completely ridiculous.

So sometimes it's just so good to go running simply because I can. It's good to just breathe & be (with unshaven legs & little blue running shorts) & not theorize or scrutinize. It's good to do something like run, that is purposeful yet natural, freeing & yet so corporeal -- so good to remember what the body is for, to remember that I am inhabiting a body, that my mind lives somewhere. It brings me to far more awareness, it is far more meditative that any other activity I could think of.

& I love where I live now, very very much -- the air is so thick in the river valley, thick & pendulous in the aspens, thick as the cottony veils. Air like curtains of pollen, air & light. Gravelly footsteps, dust & salt on damp skin gather like silt in the slow green of the river, only the sound of breath & pulse, everything very very close, nested in the calm lungs of trees; trees are lungs transpiring, surrounding you with breath held waiting for rain & night & sleep.