Runner
Carol decided that she would run. All boxers run. She
wasn't a boxer. But she figured the least she could
do was run.
That morning, Carol wrote an email to her former co-worker,
"I quit smoking. It was oddly painless."
She paused and thought about her next line; deleted
everything and started again.
"When you're laid off and laid out it is surprisingly easy to
quit smoking. One of the luxuries afforded hard
work that's still paying off. I still haven't
gotten around to muscling the new business plan.
Maybe I'll wait till all the severance is gone and
I'll have need on my side to help push
self-employment into new enterprise. Six months
now, though, and I'm still holding out real good.
Don't worry about me."
She deleted the last sentence and copied and pasted the same
email to other friends-from-work, including former
bosses.
Dogs started barking somewhere outside before lunchtime.
Over the past six months of self-employment, the big
trees in front of her home office window had rained
down clumps of snow, buds, and a week-long sparrow
convention.
Now red-orange leaves collected everywhere outside, like
Christmas decorations, clothes, business cards,
paperclips and crumbs in an apartment that friends
always said was quaint and cozy.
She missed the variety of food and specialty coffees in the
underground concourse of the financial district.
The first few months off her day-job, she still woke
every morning and got into one of her suits. After
the lunch and gym dates wore away with the summer
vacations, she realized, that her birthday suit
required less maintenance then her dry-clean only.
Sometimes the large severance pay that she received from her
former job felt like a lottery. A lottery that
stretched and flexed time in a way she had never
experienced before. The only other time she had had
this much time to consider herself was as a teenager
skipping class. In high school, she often skipped
class, because she discovered she could, even though
she had nowhere in particular to go as an
alternative. At that age, she neither wanted nor
considered less or more time.
Sometimes the same severance felt like exile into a vacuum
where time was a black hole that gave no hope of
either a beginning or an end.
One hour devoted to job-hunting, another to planning and
designing, then to email and family correspondence;
Busy Enough was the plan.
By noon, she was done. She curled up her legs on her leather
armchair and let herself be cradled.
For all the leisure unemployment had gained her, she felt
both tired and wakeful. It was hard to sleep at
night. It was always hard to sleep at night. When
she worked, she avoided bed to avoid the next work
day. These nights, when the body was quiet, the
mind woke up. Reaching for the future, always leads
to the past.
Carol decided that she would run. Run! All boxers run. She
wasn’t a boxer but the least that she could do was
run! Run yourself into the ground! Why the hell
not? If you can’t run your own house and home –
just run! Run, damn you.
She did in fact always admire boxing. That is, she always
admired the idea of boxing. The way of the Toronto
urbanite: picking recreational sources of blood and
sweat -- from a safe distance.
She jumped out of her chair and into the kitchen for some
orange juice, her knees clicking all the way.
Couple of sun salutations, and she'd be good.
Returning to her bedroom, she combed her tangled
hair back into a tight ponytail and pulled out an
old track suit.
She returned ten minutes later, hot and cold, sweating and
wheezing, with a nosebleed. Damn autumn air full of
front and backyard garden policies, had her hunched
over and bowed within two blocks from home, her
neighbouring heart knocking on her throat, her lungs
rattling like a chainsaw and her thighs screaming,
'H-ey!'
AIR! An infinite amount of cold, fresh AIR! rushed around
her like a raging river, crushed her from the sky
and lifted her from the ground. Compare running on
a treadmill and running through a quiet
neighbourhood and you know that the AIR! is so much
more full. It jammed its way through her
air-conditioned body -- full of what? The desires
of these families that have time for pretty
gardens? The desires of squirrels and flowers and
shrubs?
Back inside, collapsed in her kitchen chair and cleaning her
nose, she said to herself,
Carolynn, who runs for nothing? Go, make some money.
One hour devoted to job-hunting, another to designing, then
to emails and family correspondence. Busy Enough
was the plan.
She spent that night having a party with the past, present
and future again. Too many people sat up in that
bed with her: old lovers, friends, family and
enemies, sitting, tugging on her sheets, playing
cards with each other, philosophising with legs
demurely crossed, connecting to each other better
than they ever did to her, just to spite her. They
made such a ruckus.
She tried running the next day, with the same results.
You don’t even have a cause to run for, she reasoned. Try
cancer research or Scotiabank. What good was all
this running to get back where she started?
Run for winter then, and, hopefully, next spring.
Carol ran twice a week, wheezing and gasping 80% of the
time. She ran mid-morning, between the early
morning commuters and lunch-time student traffic.
Pets and small children always stopped to watch her
go by. One annoying retiree took to cheering her on
if she ever found her on route.
Time and practice did not improve her form despite what the
rules promised her. She ran/walked for half an hour
and never improved. She tried different routes,
different music, different stretches. Maybe she was
just that one anomaly where practice did not make
perfect. And who said it should anyway?
Her fitness was not bad, either. The last ten years had her
attached to every kind of machine a gym had to offer
and every kind of instructor. Maybe there was a
complicated simplicity about running that eluded
her. Maybe, it was the lack of walls and florescent
ceiling.
One day, bowed down, at ground level, panting and forcibly
paused, she noticed that the daisy queens had lost
their petals and seemed to raise their bare heads up
to her.
In the summertime, the residential gardens were aggressive
and competitive. They shoved their plumage out like
brazen women , the tinier flowers and vines wound
coy and provocative, while the shorter plants, moss
and lichen lay down in a more sultry and mysterious
manner.
By autumn, the residential gardens dried out and were less
tended. The thin stems of the daisies, arching and
twisting upwards, tall and dignified, without their
petals, look like drag queens who’ve thrown down
their wigs. Scattered about their flowerbeds was a
glorified mess of leaves and petals of the other
neighbouring trees and flowers paying their own
tributes. Reds and oranges warmed the fallen green
and brown. Big fat bees hovered for their last
drop of nectar.
She walked the rest of the way home.
One day, she passed an elderly Chinese couple laying rubber
tile on their porch stairs when the air had
conquered her by a tree where a single purple flower
strained on a thin stem to reach as high as her
shoulder.
Carolyn took out the headset that was getting itchy and heard
a cackling noise behind her. Up a tree, she saw
nothing else but a grey brown squirrel. “Is that
you?” she asked aloud.
With their butts raised to the sky, the elderly couple
pressed down on the rubber. They were both
pear-shaped. The man wore dull coloured khakis and
her pants were red cotton. They both wore sweater
vests and baseball caps. The elderly couple then
knelt together to inspect their work. They appeared
to be muttered quietly to themselves in Cantonese.
Maybe continuing a discussion on rubber? How long
could such a conversation last? When was it ever
really warranted? Their Chinese sounded like a
whimsical song; he muttered something and her
response floated out like a shrug. Maybe they
talked about their grandchildren, their children,
global warming, their pension. Whatever they
discussed they continued their song up the steps and
into the little wood-sided house, white with green
trim.
Somebody, obscured by a black hood, was passing her, while
talking on a cell-phone. He glanced up furtively at
her and showed that he was just a boy, with
baby-smooth brown skin and round, curious eyes, the
colour of coffee.
Like beads on a necklace, they all congregated. The boy
slowly pulled away and kept walking down the street
and they slowly unravelled.
Back inside, collapsed in her kitchen chair and cleaning her
nose, she sighed heavily. She had to start earning
money again. Start doing something that she was
relative and relevant. There was a sick charm to
beating herself with this physical incompetence,
though.
My mother would never have done that, she thought to herself
that sleepless night, regarding the elderly Chinese
couple. She would have watched my father work. She
would have teased him a little, and then she would
have gone inside to make dinner.
Six month into a job-job, Carolynn was back in an office
cubicle, emailing, faxing and scanning very
important communications to appropriate recipients,
discovering new items available in the food courts
and underground shopping. Though she was running
on treadmills again, she missed slamming herself up
against that outside running wall. She missed just
running. Wondered if running missed her.
©
lyw
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