Ice Cold

The Saint Louis air was frigid and dry on Sunday morning. I exited my apartment just before dawn broke and I exhaled a visible plume. I quickly wrapped my arms around my torso and shivered.

The run was through Simpson park, my first run in the area. I noted a river glinting silver to one side of me. The desiccated and barren trees made it seem like something crucial in the park was missing.

I was on a group run but somehow still lost in thought. My mind traced back to a night terror I had several nights prior.

In the dream I was swimming in a mysterious river’s dark waters, against current. Storm clouds gathered suddenly and my stroke rate accelerated, eager to escape the river. Eventually I made it to some shore, where a group of parents stood vigilant.

“Where are the kids?” One of them asked me.

And suddenly in the dream I was a coach, and I was supposed to be leading a team upstream as part of a workout.

The rain pelted everything. Thunder roared. Shadows stretched. Panicked, I jumped back in the river in search of the athletes. One by one, I started to find them. I woke up wracked with guilt.

I don’t know what the dream meant, if anything, but I find it interesting that I’ve had several memorable dreams about rivers over the past few weeks.

I finished the group run feeling fresh, which was a surprise. The day before was the longest run I’d ever completed: 16.9 miles (27 km). The fresh feeling in my legs was a good signifier that I’m adapting to longer distances.

Looking ahead, I am signed up for a running event on Saturday, a 15k run. I have it in me to run faster than I ever have before if I choose to push myself, and that’s exciting; improvement usually is. I’m not sure, however, that it’s competition that engages me with running. I think I’m running because it has been some sort of act of self-healing. I’m feeling steadily more rejuvenated. Through the act of running I see potential longevity.

There is something about the imperfection of an outdoor run that makes it perfect. It’s always too hot, too cold, too windy, too rainy, or includes too many hills. I realize through outdoor endurance exercise how little control I have over the universe. My lack of control is somehow freeing. A surfer can’t catch anything good by fighting against the current, but rather has to take what is given, even if it’s almost nothing. Similarly I can’t have a good run by exerting beyond my limits, and I can only fight snow and ice so much. It’s a game of patience. There’s a brief period of time in the day for some runs, and then a whole lot of waiting between the gaps.

Life happens between those gaps.

Secret River

I had a dream in which I knew about a secret river.

It was somewhere near my old house in North Carolina. In the dream I was still living in that house. The forest surrounding it was denser in my dream than in reality. It was practically a jungle and the underbrush left no obvious path.

I walked through this forest, walled by greenery, and a canopy of leaves blocked the sky. Some strands of sunlight filtered through the canopy and dappled the forest floor.

I noted that the river had excellent rapids for rafting. In the dream I pulled a kayak from my house, deep into the forest, to an embankment on the river where the rapids started. I then kayaked down the river alone, screaming with joy as the river pushed me through the rapids, rising and falling, occasionally spinning, white foam washing over me.

No one else had ever discovered this river; when I told people about it they didn’t believe me. People were curious why I dragged a kayak through a forest alone, but they let me continue my routine each day, totally undisturbed. I’d return from the rapids and detail the thrill of my ride, but my stories would fall on deaf ears.

Still, I had the river to myself, and I had the stories… and that was all that I needed.

I wish I knew what the dream meant, if it meant anything at all. I woke up trying to figure out what river it was. Was it the Neuse river? That was near my house and also had rapids, but it had been discovered and was regularly occupied by kayakers.

It took a few minutes for me to realize that this river was imagined. Still, I want to believe that it’s out there somewhere. If it is, though, will I keep it a secret?

Swimming Dreams

I had a number of dreams this week in which I had returned to swimming competition at The University of Texas. The plot seems to be the same in each dream: though I’m 37, I somehow find a loophole in the NCAA rules that allows me to compete for a fifth year.

As exciting as that sounds, each of the dreams ends as a nightmare. Either I’ve lost something that I once had—speed, power, or technique—or I’ve returned to a sport that has become unrecognizable. The locker room is full of new faces who want nothing to do with me. The coach has a greater agenda: the young athletes. I have no reason to return.

In the most reason dream, I was trapped in a time loop that forced me to repeat a blown race over and over. It was some sort of purgatory. “I must be dreaming,” I kept telling people within this dream. “No,” they’d insist. “This is reality. There’s no waking up.”

“But I just botched this race,” I’d respond. “Why am I repeating the past?”

And they’d laugh and give me the same cold grin that the bartender ghost in The Shining gives Jack Torrance. “What are you talking about, Matt? This is your first time here.”

I wake and think that the dreams might be a mirror in which I glimpse my fear of aging: of debilitating slowly while the world mercilessly moves on without me.

I have no plans to return to the pool any time soon, but I find myself thinking that memory is an odd thing. NCAA competition was a lifetime ago and memories of the sport return in kaleidoscopic fashion, a mishmash of events and images. How did I dive into the pool for warmup all those years ago? What was I thinking immediately before the race? How did I warm down?

I feel that the everlasting fight with the metaphorical dragon that is time must go on. I can see the bone break in my collarbone when I look in the mirror and can’t help but think, “will it ever be the same?” The truth is that regardless of our bone health, we will never be the same as we were yesterday.

Rather than longingly look backwards, we might as well roll with the punches and prepare for the next adventure.

The Way Things Were

I had a dream that, like many dreams, was likely an assemblage of recent events tossed around in random order. Or maybe the order wasn’t random.

In the dream I was somewhere in the Midwest and was told by a relative that a new doctor was rising in fame with an offer to fix any physical imperfection, on any volunteer, through surgery. I thought about this proposition for a bit and then signed up to make some alterations on my face.

The doctor had a team pick me up for the surgery and place me in the bed of a pickup truck. I second-guessed my decision on the way to the medical facility (can’t I accept myself as I am?) and jumped out of the truck at a stoplight. Relieved, I started walking home until suddenly a car zigzagged through a red light and hit me.

With a newly disfigured face from the car crash, I backtracked again and took the surgeon up on the offer, wishing to have my face carved into what it was before the car crash. The dream fast forwarded in a flash to after the operation. By all visible indications I looked like I did before the crash.

However, in the dream the car crash left my mind deranged and subject to sudden and violent mood swings. I had apparently alienated myself from everyone and found myself in a state of misery.

“There is an orb, deep in space, that can alter the fabric of space and time and take you back to the way things were,” I was told. “Just let it swallow you whole. If you enter this orb you’ll be transported back to another time, a better time, and you can change your decisions.”

“Are there dangers to going through this orb?” I asked.

“Yes,” the stranger replied. “It’s guarded by space zombies.”

The next thing I knew a space shuttle reminiscent of the recent SpaceX designs propelled me at the speed of light across our solar system. Ahead, a giant orange orb that seemed like a cross between a star and a black hole pulsed and throbbed. It simultaneously glowed and sucked in matter.

The titanium exterior of the ship ripped apart as space zombies (literally just human zombies in space; hey, it’s a dream) clawed their way into the ship their incredible claws and surrounded me. Their bites tore into my flesh, but I escaped to a solo pilot pod and ejected this pod from the ship with me inside. I went through the orb, bitten by zombies and wounded but not yet dead.

I emerged from this orb and returned back to who I was, before the surgery proposition and all of the madness. I thought that going back in time would cure my problems, but I felt an emptying feeling that lingered.

I was back to the way things were, but I was no longer the person who experienced those things. Reliving past events while making better decisions did not cure me; it made me more miserable than ever. There’s something hollow about experiencing the same things twice for the sake of preferring the past to the present.

All of this surreal madness, I can only assume, was a reminder not to yearn too much for the past. The past is dead, and running backwards can bring deadly consequences.

Neglect Devours

I’ve heard it argued that our dreams are trying to tell us something important about ourselves. I’ve also heard it argued that dreams are nothing but a random assemblage of memories and thoughts, broken shards of glass that are glued back together into a meaningless pattern with no design or intention.

I suspect that the truth, like many truths, is a little of both.

I had a dream last night in which I owned a large pet snake that I had long-neglected to feed. I had put off its feeding for other activities, though a part of me knew the snake was badly starved. Finally I decided to feed the snake.

I opened the snake’s cage and it lunged at my right hand. It gaped its jaws wide and swallowed the hand, and attempted to continue devouring the arm affixed to that hand. I can’t believe it thinks it can eat me, I thought.

I screamed for help, but everyone was distracted by their phones. My left hand, my good hand, went numb.

I believe the message is clear: we (I) can be devoured by the things we neglect. The snake is a metaphor for anything we value but fail to nourish. The neglected thing starves, and any starving organic thing is capable of becoming monstrous. Put off the nourishment for too long and any attempt to feed the snake is futile.

The snake can be substituted for practically anything, but I think it holds truest when substituted for a relationship, a possession, or your own health.

And what greater distraction to duty exists today than the smartphone? And still, the dream’s phone distraction can be a metaphor for anything capable of instant gratification but little lasting pleasure. By focusing on these things, we allow the pet we value to starve and eventually become something hideous.

Nourishing anything of value requires work.

Plants whither when they aren’t watered.

Kids join gangs when they have no other sense of belonging.

Neglect your own body and it becomes fertile soil for budding diseases.

Giving the things we value the proper attention means often saying “no” to the world’s army of distractions.

I must not neglect the metaphorical starving snake in the other room.

Images and Words

Cycling north and I’m edging the west side of the Mississippi River. The first 20 minutes are near-absolute darkness and I might as well be riding through space, through an ever-expanding universe in which invisible clouds have drowned out the stars. It’s cold enough to freeze the water in my water bottle and I can’t squeeze a drop out of it. My front light provides some trail visibility directly in front of me, just enough to dodge the occasional cluster of broken glass.

To my right, moments later, morning breaks and a thin strip of orange glows on the eastern horizon, across the Mississippi. Above this tangerine line the sky becomes a purple sea. Behind me I hear the steady rumble of construction vehicles moaning that “progress is important”.

A flock of wild turkeys loiters ahead. There’s one perched on the cement wall that edges the trail on my left, and another turkey pecking at something, maybe a rat, in the grass to my right. They don’t mind me.

Memories of things I’ve heard over the past week clutter my mind.

At work, a corporate head: “My car broke down and I was sooooo stressed. Like, it’s as if life as you know it ends. You can’t do anything. Sooooo glad to have my car back.”

Another corporate head: “I felt a little sick but like, I got the vaccine, so no wayyyy it’s coronavirus. Like, I got the shot already. I should be safe.”

Suddenly I wonder if I can actually be of the same species as these corporate talking heads.

Thoughts of an older man telling me his life story: “I’ve been divorced for three years. I was married for 23 years. I think constantly about what I’ve lost. We were really in love once. Someone reminded me that I’m lucky, because who gets a good marriage for more than 20 years? And that reframes my mind, even though I may never have that feeling again, and maybe I’m not meant to, but maybe it’s enough that I had it once.”

Words from another person follow these: “The high and low for me are the same thing. I quit my job. I have no plans. I have no security blanket. I don’t care. I felt like it was time. It was time to venture into the unknown. I was tired of waiting. I was tired of the security blanket. It’s both exhilarating and terrifying. I’m ready for the darkness.”

The trail ahead of me is still dark, but it suddenly concerns me less.

Thinking about those words reminds me that people can also inspire me.

I don’t want my bike ride to end because while I’m pedaling I’m absorbed in deeper thoughts and at times entranced by the present moment.

Everything, I think, is a series of expansions and contractions. While pedaling my heart expands and contracts. Trillions of light years away the universe expands, and I wonder if it is inevitable that it will eventually contract and smother us with the nothingness from which we all began, and render all of these thoughts and worries obsolete as I, my being, blends with the planets and stars that at present seem so foreign. And if so, was the security blanket really worth it?

Sunlight brushes my left cheek on the ride back to the apartment.

Weekly Plunder: Week 14 - Tornados

The weather has been apocalyptic lately.

I woke up Friday morning to a St. Louis that was blanketed by an opaque fog that rendered the city grey and misty.

Tornados and severe storms swarmed the city later that night. Wind ripped sheets of rain sideways in steady violent pulses.

That night I dreamed myself in a small Italian village based in a mountain pass, perhaps the Basilicata. Winding marble stairways sheened under the sun and wove upward through the village along the mountain pass’s edge. The village had layers of shops and restaurants, all connected by these marble stairwells.

I climbed up the main stairwell, hoping to reach the top, stopping occasionally to view people eating gelato or sipping wine. Why couldn’t I stop and join them?

Upward still I climbed, the village narrowing as elevation rose. But each time I thought I reached the top I’d look up to see another level of the village above me. There was no end in sight, and it seemed the climb upward would last forever. Why was I climbing? I had to have the best view, I told myself.

It seems a fitting metaphor for life. I’m glad I remember that dream.

What I’m Watching: Hellbound on Netflix. A pretty weird and thought provoking Korean show that explores religion, belief, and societal control.

What I’m Reading: From Paycheck to Purpose by Ken Coleman. As I transition away from a lifestyle driven by paychecks, I find it worthwhile to have some guidance from those who walked a similar path in the past.

What I’m Listening to: “Monochrome” by Between the Buried and Me. This is an interesting song without a genre and I suspect it will mean something different to everyone, so I won’t reveal what it means to me.

What I’m Doing: I start physical therapy next week. The ankle is getting there. I jumped for the first time in four months this week, and I successfully completed a one minute run. I’m happy that I ran again before 2021 closed its window forever.

What I’m thinking: I’m thinking about that dream and the “chase to the top”. Is the pursuit worthwhile when knowing full-well that the chase has no end? Or it it better to stop, take a seat, and have some gelato in that quaint little Italian village?

Today’s Injuries and Tomorrow’s Healing Process

I was hit by a car while riding my bicycle today. It was the second time in my life that a car hit me while I rode a bicycle. The first time was in college, about 16 years ago.

I had a long streak of days without an injury, and was beginning to think again that I was invincible. This is usually how the universe gets notice that you’re overdue for a little pain. The universe can only stand so much pride before it says, “Okay Virgo dude, enough with the cockiness!”

I had a nightmare the night before that had eerie parallels to my collision today, though I was driving a car in the nightmare instead of riding a bicycle. In the dream I had pulled to the side of an Interstate to answer a phone call. When I drove back into the Interstate lane, another car roared out of nowhere and hit me at an intensity that sent my car tumbling over the edge of the Interstate, which was about a hundred feet above ground.

As my car crashed into the grassland below, I realized that I had a “Rewind” button for time itself. It was sort of like the remote in the Adam Sandler film Click, but it could backtrack time when necessary (how wonderful if we could all have such a remote for the things we say and do!). I aimed to rewind my life in hopes that I could do so before my death. Maybe I could backtrack an hour and re-route my drive home.

However, I accidentally hit the “Pause” button on my time remote, not the “Rewind” button, and I did so too late. I hit “Pause” at the very instant the collision eradicated me from existence. So there I was, trapped in eternal darkness, a millisecond before my final demise, too weak to hit rewind. Time itself paused and trapped me in that instant. I was in a crouched position and completely immobile. I couldn’t move and all I could see was darkness. I was in a purgatory, stuck between life and death, between free fall and collision. It was not the first time I’ve had a night terror involving purgatory.

I woke up from the dream screaming. It was a legitimate night terror that had convinced me that I was in hell.

But there I was, awake. Wow was I glad to be alive. Fast forward a few hours.

I was riding my bicycle home from the UPS store a few minutes before noon. I stayed within the bicycle lane and wore a helmet. It seemed like it all happened at once. A car swerved in front of me, only yards ahead of me, and then maneuvered to turn right onto a side street. The car decelerated suddenly for the turn, too suddenly for me to use my brakes. The driver was likely texting and driving and had no idea I existed.

I crashed into the side of the car, hitting it with my left ribs. I ricocheted backwards and hit the road with my right ankle first, then the rest of my body. My ankle collided and twisted against the road at an unnatural angle, and I knew immediately that it would be a pretty significant injury. My bicycle then crashed on top of me.

An agonizing pain immediately swept through my ankle. I waited there, sprawled on the road, expecting the car to stop and return to where I was and perhaps call for help.

The car drove off.

I knew my ankle was in bad shape because I’ve had some significant injuries, including bone breaks, before.

I was about to give up on humanity, but I heard voices calling me, asking me if I was okay. A family (a father, wife, and daughter) rushed to my aid. I told them that I was fine, as I hadn’t hit my head, the most important of my body (Virgo, remember?). Thanks in large part to the adrenaline, I slowly managed to stand up and limp off the street.

The family asked to drive me to the medic. No, I said, I’m fine. I think I can walk home. Don’t mind the scrapes. They’re just flesh wounds.

We didn’t manage to get the license plate of the car that hit me. That was unfortunate. But people who didn’t know me tried to help me. I’ll remember that. It just takes one. We aren’t all rotten.

My shoes got destroyed from the collision. That was unfortunate too. My bike wheels got bent out of shape and will need replacement. That too is unfortunate. My shirt got torn to shreds from when my back scraped the road. Hey, like the other things I mentioned, that’s unfortunate. I liked the shirt, shoes, and bike wheels. But they are things. Things can be rebuilt.

I was mostly worried about the ankle. Walking is everything to me. Walking is life. Movement is life. I use the word “love” selectively, but I love being mobile, navigating, and thinking while on my feet.

With the adrenaline surging through me, I somehow managed to limp three blocks back to my apartment. I can walk, I thought. And thank God for that.

The ankle swelled up over the next few hours and I lost all mobility in the foot. It was not long before the adrenaline wore off and the pain flooded in. Any pressure on the foot caused agonizing pain. I decided a visit to Total Access Urgent Care was warranted.

I got some X-Rays. The muscle ligaments in the foot and ankle are severely sprained on both sides. It might take a few months to fully heal. But my foot isn’t broken.

It could’ve been so much worse.

Some time with an ankle brace is a blessing. I am fortunate. All in all, I’m in good spirits.

It sucks that it happened just before my birthday, and it sucks that I’ll probably be sitting on my ass for the next few days.

But my bike will get repaired. My foot will heal. I’ll walk and run again. I’m glad for that. I don’t know what I’d do if those abilities were removed from me.

The foot seems like a nice metaphor for life and growing up, and what it takes to maintain integrity and goodness and go out into the world and just be you in spite of those who will despise who you are to the core.

Sprained, but not broken. Swollen, but not torn. Willing to stand up when others are willing to run you down with a much bigger machine than the one you own.

I’m relieved that by chance things did not go worse than they did. I landed at what I’d consider a pretty lucky angle. I’m also grateful that my partner was willing to drive me to the doctor and look after me when it wasn’t at all necessary.

I’ll remember this birthday for awhile.

I’ve got a nice foot brace. Good news: it fits within my sandals!

A Random Dream

My grandfather has been suffering dementia for over two decades. He’s in his mid-90s now, and as of this writing he’s still alive.

I haven’t visited him in years, but I’ve heard him described as a shell of his former self. I imagine a frail husk of a person, withered and weak, wizened and pale, moving here and there but not fully aware, wheelchair bound and incapable of much else besides weak breaths.

I had a dream the other night that I visited my grandfather. Before the visit my family members warned me: “You’re going to be shocked and horrified by his appearance. The person in that nursing room is not your grandfather. He won’t know you or remember you.” My grandmother, who is now dead, was also in the dream, warning me that the encounter would be a painful experience.

I opened the door to my grandpa’s nursing room and was greeted by a version of my grandpa that existed 30 years ago. He was mentally sharp, still possessing color in his hair, and he stood up on his own two legs. He joked with me and shook my hand. Behind me, my family was silent.

It seemed he had hoodwinked everyone, I thought, like Willy Wonka’s introduction in that old 70’s film!

“Don’t be fooled, he might look okay right now, but he’s in terrible shape and has no mind left,” someone whispered to me, convinced that what we just witnessed was only a momentary flash of acuity.

“Don’t listen to them!” My grandpa declared. “I’m fine, see?” And he shimmied a dance move, grinned, laughed, and took a sip of scotch from a nearby glass. “What a joke I pulled on everyone, huh!?”

Baffled, I proudly shouted, “See, he’s fine! He’s in even better shape than all of us!”

I woke up and thought about death, how grueling it is. Like a leech devours blood, age will drain someone of their identity slowly, over many years. If we live long enough, we will inevitably watch someone close to us die horribly.

I often suspect there is no soul or afterlife. Our minds contain our full identities and ability for self consciousness. Our concept of ourselves is therefore as fleeting as a shooting star, a flash in a sky filled with glittering lights that’s gone and easily forgotten. Blink and you’ll miss it. With the passing of the mind, a vessel remains with lungs that expand and contract, and a heart that weakly pumps blood through arteries. It is still something organic, like a tree, but tragically little more.

Identity is therefore fleeting, so it’s important to have a strong grasp of it while I can. It’s a valuable commodity for any person, more precious than any metal or money, because without it we are not fully alive. There’s no rule on how long self consciousness can last, but it tends to be shorter than one wants.