A Meeting Of Parallel Lines

Unwittingly
John Burnside

I've visited the place
where thought begins:
pear trees suspended in sunlight, narrow shops,
alleys to nothing

but nettles
and broken wars;
and though it might look different
to you:

a seaside town, with steep roofs
the colour of oysters,
the corner of some junkyard with its glint
of coming rain,

though someone else again would recognise
the warm barn, the smell of milk,
the wintered cattle
shifting in the dark,

it's always the same lit space,
the one good measure:
Sometimes you'll wake in a chair
as the light is fading,

or stop on the way to work
as a current of starlings
turns on itself
and settles above the green,

and because what we learn in the dark
remains all our lives,
a noise like the sea, displacing the day's
pale knowledge,

you'll come to find yourself
in a glimmer of rainfall or frost,
the burnt smell of autumn,
a meeting of parallel lines,

and know you were someone else
for the longest time,
pretending you knew where you were, like a diffident tourist
lost on the one main square, and afraid to enquire.
_________

Sometime in the last months of 2006 I first discovered this John Burnside poem. It was late at night and I sat on my bed and wept, reading it over and over and over. Then, just as suddenly, I lost it again. I went backwards and forwards through my two thick poetry anthologies trying to find it but couldn't. Until the night before last, when, alone in the dark once again I opened a book at its exact page. Unwittingly.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running*

I always feel afraid beforehand. I always think the task is impossible. I have fantasies of being abducted, having a heart attack, falling over and breaking something. Or I tell myself that I am sickening and shouldn't go...

Half the battle is getting myself dressed. So I do it really quickly. If I'm dressed up like that I can hardly not go.

And then I'm out on the front step stretching. As I work with my muscles, clay under my hands, my heart flutters. It's something about the taper of my waist, the curve of my thighs, the shapes I've felt change over the months. My pale blue T shirt hangs looser as I stand up.

I don't run straight away. I walk to the end of my road with a serious expression across my forehead. But the first few trots surprise me, like laughter.

It takes about ten, maybe fifteen minutes to find my pace. Generally I spend that time thinking about all the accessories I don't have. A heart rate monitor. A watch that can record my splits. Some new trainers. And a couple of new sports bras (I can see this in the faces of the men I pass). I no longer want an mp3 armband though. I don't want to listen to music as I run. Part of the joy is hearing my breath settle into rhythm, and the peace.

At this point I'm still conscious of my feet. I look down past my legs, beating the pavement like spoons, to the little key pouch on my trainers. It's the cutest thing, a little bug that sits on my foot the whole way round. It makes me smile.

Finding my stride is a beautiful thing. It's sweet, relaxed, comfortable. It's what tells me I'm a runner. And that I don't need anything I don't have in that moment.

I pass other runners with a gentle, reserved nod. On the busiest suburban streets the prams and bus queues and loitering teens disappear. Runners occupy a different space.

Sometimes there are patches of dappled shade. Sometimes the sun flares across the pavement. Occasionally - deliriously - the clouds let go of a whisper of rain. I like it when I am joined by fat bumblebees, humming alongside my steady breath. At times I let out little happy sighs.

One of my favourite routes takes me across the brow of a hill. From the top I can see the City, Docklands, the Post Office Tower and the London Eye. The view makes me want to weep with pride.

And yes, the hills; I pull in my stride and my elbows and keep my eyes on the ground. The top is always a glorious celebration, no matter how steady or easy the climb.

Eventually I feel my legs change. There's a thickness that tells me I'm near the end. But with it comes a renewed energy and the ability to open out my stride for one final push. In the last few minutes I retrace the route in my mind and fill up with gratitude. What a privilege to have a body that can power me across the miles.

And then it's over. With one simple step (it wasn't impossible at all) I make the transition back to walking. I smile.

Back on the porch I stretch again, longer, deeper. My thighs feel like bullets. I'm wet and rosy.

"Mummy's run a long way!" I tell my cat as I shut the door to my flat. And she didn't get abducted, or break a thing.
_______
*With apologies to Haruki Murakami

Joining The Dots

I'm longsighted. I can make out the leaves on trees two hundred yards away but I have to wear glasses to read.

Similarly, I can understand the most complicated of philosophical arguments, find the deepest of metaphors, but I struggle to grasp the simplicity of a rose in the foreground.

I'm coming to realise that I have never truly seen my emotional landscape. I have been staring at it, like one of those pictures hidden within dots, thinking that the truth of my feelings is something deep, some great mystery. When really it's so simple: my feelings are the dots.

I remember trying to explain the language of music to someone once. He couldn't understand why, after G, the notes return to A again, and how that relates to the way the notes appear on the stave. It drove me mad trying to explain it. But this morning, as I sat in a coffee shop listening to the piped piano music, his confusion finally made sense. Because how can seven little notes create all the music in the world? How can feelings as simple as sadness, anger and love fill our hearts to bursting?

But they do. The truth of it is right in front of me.

And The Rain Came Down

Today, apparently, it will rain a whole month's worth of rain.

Last night I dreamed I was on holiday with my entire family. I rarely dream about us all together. At one point my brother and I were walking along a beach and the tide was lapping at our heels. But we found our way to the safety of an ice-cream hut. It was strange and sad. I woke early.

After polishing off a job application I curled up on the sofa with my book and the cat. Sometimes Tallulah lets down her guard (just like me) and it is precious. She lay with her so small head on my ribs and at times I had to stop reading to simply watch her breathe.

I read right to the end of my book. I'm still in my pyjamas. The green-leaved rain hasn't let up all day.

This Heart, Leaping

Unexpected excitement.

I don't know what's got into me this evening. My life is in disarray, and yet, here I am, deliriously excited.

I remember being 20. A first year student. Shopping in Netto. Walking everywhere because I couldn't afford public transport. Whole days spent in bed with my girlfriend, not sleeping... Finally getting up at 4.30 p.m. to scrape into free galleries before they closed. Hoarding cheap chocolate and eating nothing but noodles. Staying up all night, not drinking, debating philosophy. Sailing round Brixton in my hippie clothes way, way before Brixton was cool.

Tonight I'm 32 but I feel just as alive. I've flaunted my open blinds to watch the street darken outside. And what a metaphor. We make life so complicated. But really it's all light and dark. And our hearts, leaping.

Into The Blue

I can still smell the Piz Buin on my skin.

Lying under the blue you can be anywhere. Somewhere where the hours disappear into the worlds of endless novels. Somewhere where the sea hushes every worry and sends them up as prayers to the warm belly of the sun. Somewhere where the women draped in sarongs and sand rise at the end of long, lazy afternoons into the kisses of their lovers. Somewhere where ice-cream drips like laughter down my chin. Somewhere where the cicada-filled dusk caresses sunburned shoulders and knees. Somewhere with the promise of a night full of seafood, rich red wine and sticky, fragrant sex.

Today, lying in a London park, I fell deep into this blue. And this cloud, like the spine of a swimmer, carried me away.