A run should not mean...

I was going for a post a week, a step back from the runs before sort of digesting them into a summary of sorts.  I think maybe because I didn't want to seem too eager, or I didn't want to jump into a writing momentum I couldn't maintain.  But here I am, still dripping wet from a 90 degree run in Arkansas humidity. 

I started out trying to focus on not thinking about what I should be thinking about--not trying to decide what I should be noticing or feeling.  I did better this time.  Now and then I would notice myself writing a line in my head...that's not unusual for me because I write my life in my head (why am I not a rich, famous novelist by now?  Or a well-known writer, having contorted my life into a witty memoir?  It's not too late...) and when I did, I would try to push myself back, closer to the mind and body experience of the run.  I finally realized in the last half mile or so that the truth is that I don't want words between me and the run.  They set me away from the experience, make what I'm doing seem a little less genuine. 

That realization led me to the poem I was reading with my students today.  (Okay, forcefeeding to them, which, given that this is May 23, is to be expected.)  In Archibald MacLeish's "Ars Poetica," he says, "A poem should be wordless/ As the flight of birds" and later, "A poem should not mean/ But be."  A run should be wordless, my flight through whatever and wherever the experience takes me as I push farther and harder.  A run should not mean, but be.