My sandals were unmoved. And my mental vacancy equally intransigent. There was no common ground, no meeting point. The sandals, resolute in their obstinacy and my reluctance slowly hardening into rejection.
The sandals would stay in the cupboard. I would run barefoot. My feet would be free and in some perverse fashion my sandals would be avoided, confined .... punished.
Fred had told me it is called Mindful Running. Surprisingly there is now a term to describe heightened self-awareness running. This was what I was doing and the fewer encumbrances the better.
The first few paces on the tar were cold and hard. My feet were rigid and heavy and the ground seemed to drag on every step.
Slowly on the incline a little lightness came into my stride and my limbs accepted that movement was now mandatory.
Sometimes it takes a little longer, sometimes not, but the lazy protestations of the human form eventually succumb to the rigours we impose on our bodies. Especially in the case of running.
The tar was of varying consistency. Seldom polished and often as course as a quarry pit. It was an endless game to find the ideal foot placement, an endless engagement of my mental acuity. My focus was unwavering. It was me and foot placement, leg movement, motion, caution and correction.
But every now and again the sweet-spot struck. It rose up from underfoot, the perfect connection. Flow. The sweet-spot on mother earth, a bountiful gift. This was the narcotic, the prize. The perfect placement. The flawless form. Having sensed the "opiate", I sought and fought for more.
Lightness in my stride encouraged me to lift myself up and down from the asphalt to the grainy brick sidewalks. Musical chairs. Musical feet. I looked for variation and ran a "crooked mile". It was fun. A building site sailed by, debris spilling into the road. My game was enchanting. Obstacles created feedback loops and decisions were instantly rewarded. I was awake, intuitive, prescient.
Fred had told me this is the goal. Mindful Running was responsive, sensitive and in-tune. The world had receded, my interface was one dimensional, the absorption complete. I was aware yet oblivious.
And that was the exact point I realised something was working it's way into my foot. Dammit. Not again? A shard of capricious glass? Such perfection and in a moment reduced to such hopeless incapacitation.
Hobbling to a stop I looked underfoot. My penetrating gaze revealed nothing in my foot. But I knew it was there. Something had attacked me. My David. Mindfulness turned to irritation and tetchiness. Later, at home, after some mindful minor surgery I removed the stubborn glass chip from my foot and thought I'd best find some cheap food after a quick shower.
Driving to the local KFC I was struck by the contradictions. Only a few minutes had passed since I was in Mindful Running nirvana. Only a few minutes earlier I was light-years from the commercial pursuits of our daily desperate gyrations, and now I was back in the fray. Only a few minutes earlier I had levitated across the overbuilt urbanscape. A Goliath in earlier stature and now in virtual supine subservience I clutched the simian steeringwheel. Cars, traffic, fast food, toxins, obsession, disregard, and bad radio. And so the iPod. Another contradiction. So nice. So demeaning. Mark Knopfler was in there singing ..... "can't get no antidote for blues". Can't get no antidote for .... shoes, I thought.
And then Golden Earring, Forty Five Miles. Perhaps forever.
My reflections were mindful, my reality still separate. The contrasts and contradictions were overwhelming and terrifying.
Everything needed was undesirable. Everything desirable was unneeded. Every forced action forced an unfortunate consequence. I couldn't play the game differently.
The food was not right. The car was too much, the waste overbearing, the consumption vulgar, the noise intense and the untruth ... well, the untruth is frightening. I was in it and part of it.
I thought of my next Mindful run, knowing that it needed to be very soon. And knowing that Fred, was right.
Ascetic
That in the end
I may find
Something not sold for a penny
In the slums of Mind.
That I may break
With these hands
The bread of wisdom that grows
In the other lands.
For this, for this
Do I wear
The rags of hunger and climb
The unending stair.
-Patrick Kavanagh
Copyright © Estate of Katherine Kavanagh
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