Square One

Sometimes the best path forward is backward, one of those paradoxes you’d think only exist in a Lewis Carroll story. I’m not just taking a step backward these days. I’m sprinting towards what once was, but hasn’t been, but potentially could be again, if one resists the natural ebb and flow of things and swims toward the maelstrom.

I think of time and how deceiving and malicious it can be if one isn’t careful. Age 10 was both yesterday and three decades ago. A 10-year-old’s idea of sprinting down a sandy hill for the sake of feeling a cool breeze on the cheeks and the adrenaline rush of raw speed was enough to try something that an adult would consider dumb (because it’s unsafe, of course). A tumble and scraped knees were worth it. I think of trying to skateboard and drink coffee at the same time, and failing spectacularly at both.

Contrast that to adulthood, when movement is mostly calculated. We are tethered to a beaten path, a watch, a pace, and a “goal.” Even the trails are a set number of miles, a metric. The daily walk stays on a flat sidewalk, perfectly smooth, manufactured for the sake of comfort, a number of steps that a doctor says must be “hit.” Walking for the sake of “exercise.” Movement is a chore; you’re either sitting robotically or walking robotically. What adult yearns to hang upside down and study the clouds?

I try to find the spontaneous boy who thrived in random chaos. That person, I think, was waiting patiently, not dead but just in hibernation.

I go out on a brisk fall morning and run barefoot in the park. A few random sprints with no set interval or time, just the rush and fast twitch muscles activating. I wander through neighborhoods I hadn’t seen before and study the halloween decor in the lawns.

I drive to work listening to what I used to consider 90’s trash, Limp Bizkit, and think a metal show sounds like a great idea, just losing oneself in music, aggressive and fast music, cathartic music, anti-establishment stuff with machine-gun guitar riffs and banshee vocals.

It seems preferable to another day with a prescribed routine: a day that slashes routine to pieces.

We have a pumpkin painting activity at work, for team building, so I paint Art the Clown, the evil killer clown from the Terrifer films. Everyone else paints happy faces or just writes inside work jokes. Nothing left for wonder or awe.

I doubt I won the contest, but I know I created a nightmare or two.

Hurried Driver

Veering the steel cage around a slower steel cage, breathless, frantic, throat clenches, phone tethered to hand (who texted me?), a white rabbit racing. I have somewhere I must be! Panic overwhelms the mind, foot on the pedal presses forever downward, yes I must be faster, traffic could destroy me if I don’t act rash. Slurp the latte, fight for a parking space near the building. Ten seconds to spare, the morning is a game of inches! Breaths at last. Rinse and repeat. Freedom via the car. Maybe it needs an upgrade. A raise would permit that. It will have more space, better mileage. Touch screen linked to the cloud, GPS showing the way.

What Dreams May Come

I had a dream last night in which it was dusk on some isolated and vacant beach, and I was at the shoreline, lying face-down on my stomach, belly against wet sand.

Waves brushed me and foamed around me as I stared at a fading scarlet sun and watched the water darken. My mouth was just elevated enough to prevent choking on water. I had nowhere to go and nothing to become, but I felt a satisfaction regardless.

I woke before dawn and thought that if I could make my life that still, it would be an accomplishment.

Talk at the Pool

I was coaching a local club swimming team that I help with on Wednesday evenings and found myself talking to an eight-year-old boy, who swims in one of the beginner groups.

He’s especially small and wears board shorts that are long enough to look like pants due to his short legs. He still has those puffy toddler cheeks and squinty eyes that also make him look especially young and somewhat cherubic.

Somehow we were talking about the fast technical race suits that swimmers used at major events until they were eventually banned for being too fast (the “super suits”).

“They’re like shark skin,” I said. “And they can cover your whole body, and the water around you just rolls right off. You fly through the water.”

His eyes grew wide.

“And you wore them?” He asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “For a little bit, before I retired. Then they got banned anyways.”

“But why’d you retire?”

I paused and had to think about that for a moment.

“I finished college. Then there was nothing left to compete in.”

“You don’t have to compete though,” he said. “You can still enjoy it.”

Then he pushed off the wall and started swimming, and I felt a pang of sadness and thought about how damn wise kids can be sometimes.

2024: A Hopeful Step Back

Sometimes you have to take a step backward to move forward. I have a pervading sense that backtracking will be a theme for me in 2024. I’ve realized, through trial and error, that I want to revert certain aspects of my life.

The first change surrounds my cycling. I tested the waters of fitness cycling for a few years and have decided to go back to my bike commuter roots. Broken bones are not the primary reason for this. I find the most joy in keeping cycling simple: just hopping on a commuter bike and riding around a park, or on a short trip to the grocery store. I envision my future and cannot see myself embracing cycling as a sport: it just seems like an added stressor, and cycling is supposed to be my stress relief. So, I’m selling my endurance bike and a lot of my cycling apparel.

I often find the most joy in life when I keep everything simplified. Cycling for me is a prime example of this. I want cycling to be an adventure, not a chore. I want it to be organic and raw, not an exercise monitored by GPS watches and power meters. I want to breathe fresh air and have the world slow down, not obsess myself over the desire to speed up. I generally hate “intervals,” so why am I pigeoning myself into more of them during a hobby?

I want to rid myself of the Protestant work ethic while on a bike.

I’m also ditching the Kindle in favor of more physical books. I read far too much via blue screen. There was a time in my life when I only read text on paper. Electronic reading is a strain on the eyes. Sometimes I wonder if our screens will render all of us prematurely blind.

I’m aiming to write more reviews. Years ago I enjoyed providing reviews of various elements of pop culture and I’d like to return to the habit. Some of my favorite authors, including Edgar Allen Poe and George Orwell, were also prolific reviewers.

Finally, I’m prioritizing my own dreams. Over the years I’ve let them slip too much for the sake of money and as I look up the capitalist heirarchical ladder, I don’t see more money solving any problems. In fact, I see more money creating new problems.

When I die, I don’t foresee anyone reading a eulogy about how much money I made or how productive I was as an employee. That would be terrible as part of anyone’s eulogy, and the thought of that having anything to do with my character is nauseating.

What would I want to be said at my funeral? I think everyone must ask himself or herself this question at some point and come to terms with the finiteness of life. I think for me, the answers are starting to be more apparent, and they have nothing to do with materialism.

So here’s to 2024, a step back for the sake of forward movement.

Heritage and Setting Sail

In the mid-1800s, an Irish woman named Mary set sail for America. En-route she contracted ship’s fever, causing her to lose her hair, but she survived the journey and went on to make a living selling homemade items.

In the US she met a mysterious journeyman named Tom Fitzpatrick, whose origins are unknown, and they gave birth to Catherine Fitzpatrick, who grew up to own and run a boarding house, which she rented to mill workers.

Catherine then wed another traveler, John Devlin, an English-born sailor who ran away from home at 14 and traveled to Australia, South America, and South Africa.

These were my ancestors, and as you can see, it is in my DNA to be on the move. It helps to explain why I cannot sit still for long, and why the office quickly feels like a prison with florescent lights and prisoners who happen to have nice health insurance. It is why a noble death involves a fatal maneuver while on the most epic of journeys, not sitting somewhere and rotting.

It is why I begin planning the next journey as the current one ends.

"I Don't Wanna Die"

The fall season is a bit like life in that it’s both beautiful and painfully ephemeral.

It seems like we are allowed a few weeks to appreciate the vibrant foliage before it desiccates and leaves behind a gaunt assemblage of ghostly spindly bare trees.

I reckon we can feel this way about how our bodies age. There’s a grace period where time affords us some beauty after having weathered the storm of our youths, but eventually the destruction can be merciless, especially if we don’t plan for it.

The cold is starting to creep into the bones and I especially feel it in my right collarbone, which has broken twice. It is a harsh reminder that not all things fully heal.

I find myself thinking of ways to make time slow, which requires discomfort. The sameness of days only makes time accelerate.

I’ll fight my own mortality to the end because frankly, I don’t wanna die.

Fall may be brief, but I’m determined to catch the next one.