Choking on Wind

It was at mile 12 that I swallowed the wind, that it choked me, that I would have laughed, if I could, but only leaned gamely forward, tilting at such an angle that I could not have stood, much less run, if not for the force pressing back the other way. Thirty five miles an hour, spelled out, just to add girth to the measurement. A headwind and a sidewind and too rarely a tailwind - cruel that way. Forceful pressure like an ocean current a few hundred feet down, and black too, black like that, a hint of light above a dense shroud, spreading the light, concealing and obscuring. 

Romance to the maelstrom, to be among it, in it, to drift under 7, on average, given the circumstances. Snow swirls briefly, for moments; it is blown away and gone so soon that it may not have ever been. No mark in the present is the same as none past.

I don't know. Running produces a sense of profundity, both while it is being indulged in, and in the twilight of that indulgence. The endorphins create a sense of unique brilliance, of stark lucidity, that this, this is it, man, the whole of it, right here, I've got it. Bottle it up, ship it out. This is what people are looking for, have always been and always will be, until they figure it out, that the answer is in bipedal propulsion. 

But again, I don't know. This is a thing that happened. Not unlike other things that have already happened, or things that will. Muddled poetry, words picked up from the pavement, strewn across miles, pieced together through some crude filter of Norton's Anthologies. 

Words have meaning and miles have meaning in the same way that sheet music has meaning and a garden hose has meaning but you can't play Bach with it; sometimes things don't translate. But I try, sometimes, because things happen, and words happen, and words happen about those things that happen. Every step generates an idea; some stick, some don't. But there's only so much room there, and there is this space, a functional repository for words that need a home.