Running Mantras (Week Thirty-Nine)

12/12/2020

Running Mantras (Week Thirty-Nine)

Lately, I've been reading a lot about mantras and distance running, specifically how there are many runners who like to find a few words or a phrase to repeat to help direct their thoughts away from the physical discomfort of a hard run. (You probably knew that, but it does seem to be something of a trend in the running blogs and newsletters that come across my screen, along with vibrating foam rollers, which as I can attest have gotten Very Serious over the past few years: here's one that will rattle the teeth out of your mouth.)

As you might expect, most mantras I've read about have a tendency to be nauseatingly saccharine. Can you imagine saying (thinking) something like 'stronger with every step' or 'steady forward momentum' or -- most disorienting to my ear -- 'up and over' thousands of times over the course of ten or twenty or more miles? Maybe dying would be a better choice than using one of these mantras, I thought.

Then again, the mantra I've found that works best for me -- 'fast, easy, light, strong' -- isn't exactly in a different genre than the ones I was just (lightly) mocking. This mantra seems kind of boring and obvious to me as I look at it on the page -- like I consider myself a writer, couldn't I come up with something more interesting? -- but when I'm running, my oxygen-deprived mind loses its usual (and, in my case, infinite) capacity for crippling doubt and superficial judgment. Fast, easy, light, strong: these words, each one giving way to the next in an infinite loop, are imbued with meaning and direction and -- as I make minor adjustments to my stride -- nuance. While running, I feel calm and confident as I assess projects and developments in my life that, when I'm not running, are the source of stress and anxiety. Fast, easy, light, strong. It's a nice way to exist.

But when I stop, I always return my default mode of assessment, which is hard to distill into mantra form but would be something like 'bureaucracy, corruption, tedium, despair.'

This week, I asked myself if it would be possible for me not to return to the default but to remain optimistic, to keep believing, after I stopped running. I remembered the revelation from my Feldenkrais lesson as I assessed the two sides of my body: 'One side is how you live your life and the other is how you *could* live your life.' Why did I have to be so pessimistic and cynical? What exactly was the evidence for this position? Or was it a choice? I quickly reviewed the decades of my existence. I had done some things, I had failed at some others. And what about society? Couldn't the same be said? (I resisted the urge to say that, actually, society had mostly failed.) There seemed to be support for both positions. Maybe pessimism was a choice and maybe I could make a different one.

Or maybe, I thought, there's a middle ground that doesn't require any choice at all.

Posted at 01:39 PM in Expression, Science Projects | Permalink

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Music: Death Culture at Sea and Saturnine

Listen or download songs and records from my indie-rock past with Saturnine here and Death Culture at Sea here.

Music Video: Remembrance of Things Past

Watch the rock opera Remembrance of Things Past written and performed by Saturnine and Frances Gibson, starring Bennett Madison and Sheila McClear.

Video: The Chaos Detective

The Chaos Detective is a series about a man searching for 'identity' as he completes assignments from a mysterious organization. Watch the first episode (five parts) on YouTube.

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Expression//Reaction//ScienceProjects

12/12/2020