Cracked Rearview

The night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That's pride fucking with you. Fuck pride. Pride only hurts. It never helps. You fight through that shit. 'Cause a year from now, when you're kicking it in the Caribbean, you gonna say to yourself, 'Marsellus Wallace was right.'
                                                                             --Pulp Fiction

What do you do?

Do you act like Butch, reckless and crazy? Fuck common sense and anything close?

Do you ignore the sting?

Because you know you're gonna feel the sting.

Butch heeded the sting, and we all know what happened to him.

Do you end up in a basement with your hands tied together, rubber ball in your mouth, awaiting your turn to be fucked in the ass while the gimp watches, all because you didn't ignore the sting?

You know you're no Butch; you know you might not make it out alive.

Or do you listen to Marsellus and fuck it? Fight through it so a year from now you could kick it in the Caribbean?

Because even though you hate the sun, the thought of a Caribbean in the future is kind of nice.

Do you ignore
the identical blank and the blank who won't blank and the blank he took away and the blank who doesn't know or doesn't care?

Or do you write about them here?

What do you
What do you
What do I
do?

Glimmer Like Bolan in the Morning Sun

Because it was so cold on Thursday night, I had to run at the gym instead of outside. I started out by running what was, by my counting of laps, a mile on the inside track, but by my Nike +'s calculations, .8 miles. I know I know how to count, and I know 16 laps around the track is just short of a mile, so I was fairly certain about my distance, but just to be sure, I decided to run on a treadmill instead. 

Ugh.

Fuck.

I HATE the treadmill.

I used to run on one all the time. For years after I started running, it was my go to--probably because Glenn hates running outside and it's his go to--and I had no problem with it at all. Every once in a while I'd run outside, like if the weather was particularly nice or I was on vacation somewhere, but for most of my running life, if you were to find me running, you'd find me on a treadmill, listening to music while alternating between watching myself in the mirror, the silent TVs on the wall above my head, and other gym people walking in and out of the room.

I don't know exactly how I transitioned to running outside, but I guess it must have something to do with not being with Glenn anymore since now, looking back, I'm realizing that anytime the two of us are off, I do most of my running outside, and then once we get back on, I resume my running on that insipid machine.

This time, though, the relationship isn't resuming and the treadmill isn't, either.

The crappy thing about the treadmill isn't that it's so boring, even though it is, or the notion that if you're on it, you're running and running but not getting anywhere, like people used to say to me, although that's true, too. The thing about the treadmill is that it's so damn uninspired; so repetitive; so mechanical; so predictable. When I used to run on it, I'd get in my car, drive to the gym, walk to the cardio room, put in my ear buds, set the treadmill to the speed I was running that day, set the timer to the amount of time I planned to run, start the treadmill, and run. Hisshisshiss. Boom. Hisshisshiss. Boom. Hisshisshiss. Boom. If my music wasn't loud enough, I'd hear the whir of the machine as the belt continuously looped and the sound of my foot strike every however many seconds or so. The speed never really changed unless I had an interval day scheduled, the conditions in the room never really changed unless a particularly smelly or loud person was in the vicinity, and I never really changed, in mind, in body, or in soul. The treadmill was, and I'm sure still is, a harbinger of sameness.

Running outside, though--that's something else completely. Running outside is running free. It's energy. It's hope. It's bounding down the street with a spring in my shoes, the endless sidewalk in front of me, and the world all around. It's Tom and Mark and Gerard and Vic and Patrick and Nate sing screaming in my ears, urging me on. The speed and intensity, so unlike when on the treadmill, follows my body's natural rhythms: if I feel like I need to run fast, I run fast; if I feel like I need to run slow, I run slow; if I feel bouncy or like taking big strides, I bounce or widen my strides; if I feel like I need to go easy and shorten my strides, I do that, too.

Outside, as opposed to on the treadmill, I don't need to do what the machine tells me.

I don't need to strike, strike, strike, repeat.

Outside, I can bounce, glide, shuffle, and soar.

The treadmill is okay for some people--I guess--but it's not

okay--

for me.