“How can you hide from what never goes away?” – Heraclitus
As he walked his daily six miles, the old man listened to a memoir by a queer poet who loved dogs. The old man also loved dogs. Poetry not so much. He wondered at just how many more miles he might have run if he could have listened to some good books at the same time. Those miles might have vanished.
He couldn’t really remember ever really being bored when he ran.
Heard some Pablo Cruise music in the grocery store. Remembered psyching himself up before the five a.m. start at the Honolulu Marathon – a disco emptied as he headed toward Pearl Harbor – psych himself with Love Will Find A Way.
It’s all right once you get past the pain. He reminded himself coming out of Hawaii Kai. And again climbing Diamond Head the second time. Feeling a need to change, move on to something new. Feel like you’re falling apart. Really, is there anything better than the homestretch of a marathon. Where you have turned yourself inside-out and shook hard and found something more.
The old man had to look at decay the same way. You call it aging maybe. Never going to go away, whatever we call it.
So he figured there was nowhere to hide.