All I seem to leave the house for is sex and the gym, which feel somehow, now that I write this, closely connected. Those three-letter words: Sex. Gym. Sit. Now. In the park. I walked once around it on the running path, feeling like an intruder – can’t you see I’m a runner, too! – hated. As I did on my way here, crossing the street on Riversdale Road and a cyclist spat just before he passed me, as if he wanted me to know it was for me.
Why?
Another three-letter word. And how. How and why, the three-letter question words. What makes them different from the other question starters? “Why” seems to be the most common, at least from childhood. “Where” is just a howl, the sound of crying. Where’s my dinner? But why, always asking, always repeating the same word – why, why, why – like a person crying out in pain, waili, waili (alas, alas), railing against god and the universe.
And then the “how”, wanting to know about the way things work, motivations. Barking. How, how, how. As in Hebrew, the sound of a dog barking: huv, huv, huv. God and dog. More three-letter words.
(The evenings are getting colder now, a feelng that summer has settled into itself, completely here, arrived, the point just before it turns, just before the leaves start to change colour, just before darkness comes early. Summer is at a point of stillness. The trees cannot become more than they are already, greener, lusher, as if the air will never get warmer now, not for another year.
It’s a beautiful stillness, the world not going anywhere quite yet, as if change is yet to happen, but there is no indication of it, no sign of things about to shift, except that stillness is a myth, nothing stops, and stillness is just the beginning of something new. Things will soon turn.)
The sky is blue and grey and pink. The joggers are plentiful on the path behind the bench I’m sitting on. And beyond them, the sound of the evening’s traffic, people coming home from work. Running will make you beautiful, is what I have always thought. When I run I am unconcerned with what people see, what they think. A tractor races across the lawn and the driver blows his whistle to signal the park will be closing soon.
The runners gain momentum, a smooth rhythm, a kind of gliding, nothing can stop them or slow them down. Their legs will carry them, their lungs will keep expanding, making room for more and more air. Their minds will become air, because they are air, at one with air, running on air, faster and faster and faster, all the way home for their dinner.
Around the Park in 80 Days 