Last night, a barbecue with friends. Two types of steak, a quartered chicken, fresh veggies, buttery pasta shells, and black beans. A meal for men and boys. We ate it all in a tree fort, wearing pirate patches, swearing our honorable allegiances, etc.
Still, fighting anhedonia and listlessness with bike riding. Soon, I will be able to start jogging again, where feelings of boredom will be replaced by inward screams of demonic self-discipline and the open invitation to pain. No exercise hurts as much as does jogging when taken on too unexpectedly, or too seriously at the onset. My bones are made of aging lumber, they creak as does a house settling. We were all cutting costs at time of construction.
For the runner's high, I am chasing dragons.
Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. - G.K.Chesterton
I have found a new ride up into the hills in Sonoma - Lovall Valley. The road winds upwards for several heartbursting miles. Hills give way to hills, curves to curves. The path is lined on both sides with overhanging trees, metal gates, signs of wealth - oaks and imports of all kinds.
Once there, a small valley opens onto an elevated floor where all things are available to the sky, as if the land was arranged as an invitation . The hills meet the blue as part of the same place. The shape of the land simplifies, giving the effect of an embrace. All directions seem to confer a protection of some kind, as if riding along an open glove.
It's a loop road, houses that can barely be called just houses lining both sides, and on the valley floor, ascending along both sides of the valley hills unseen, each separated from all others by vast spaces, some disappearing entirely into the privacy of wealth.
Reflecting there, simplifying life through exertion. Galvanizing the spirit with the shock of patterned exhaustion, repeating the unanswerable questions, moving towards the manageable ones, what matters, how long, then coasting among the hills and the sun, also.
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