A Short Story In The Making:

My creative writing is typically fiction rooted in non-fiction. A genre based in the real life events & embellished with creative liberties.

On a recent run I began writing a speech and was distracted by it for several miles. I did not notice my feet hitting the soft trail in pace, not my legs bending and straightening in stride, not my arms pumping back and forth in aid. At one point I crossed a road and I know I looked both ways twice. The place I usually cross from forest back into neighborhood is at a bend in the road and it is best to look twice, I always do, but this time my head moved side to side by the memory of the muscles in my thin, graceful neck, my mind busy with imagining. The registration of no cars, safe to cross, occurred as parasympathetically as restful breathing in the automatic machine of the body that healthy one's pay so little attention. I know if a car had been driving towards me then I would have run in place until it passed, I would have come slightly out of my reverie to time my road crossing, and once across I would have slipped easily back into the imaginary like coming in and out of morning dreams. Moments like this, like when you are walking along admiring here or there and your eyes turn south to the sidewalk just in time to step safely off a curb or up a step, leave me in awe of ourselves: the animal you taking care of the body while the human you, the thoughts, run blissfully unburdened by regulating running feet, pumping blood or moving diaphragms, the multitasking machine that runs until one day it doesn’t. 

I often write speeches in my head, or email replies, or stories, when running or instead of counting sheep, years ago I wrote my sister’s wedding speech on a run. I can only begin once I have warmed up, for me that happens somewhere between mile one and two. My mind then disconnected from my body becomes unburdened by the thump of each foot making contact with the ground, and the resounding shock resonating up my legs. I feel light, effortless, my breath is not strained and does not change with the hills. I float above my moving legs free to wander through my thoughts, a runner’s high. For my sister’s wedding speech I began with a list of all the things I do because she does. She is my older sister, I have two, and though I have become independent with age my younger years were absorbed with what they thought, wore, did, ate. I ran nine miles completely lost in the list, repeating it over and over to myself, refining it, afraid to lose it if I stopped. Months later with a flower crown atop my head and a nervous knot in my stomach I recited it into a microphone, the opening to a successful toast. The other day, on the recent run, I was writing another wedding speech but I was the bride and unexpectedly, my imagination had married me to my first love. 

How funny that our own thoughts can surprise us, since after all they are our own and it is close quarters up there in our brains. Where do these surprising thoughts hide to maintain the element of surprise? Perhaps they find hiding spots in the many protective folds of matter, grey or white. Once when I was little I wrapped myself in a long white curtain, careful to make the fabric look untouched and to cover my toes, I was never found by my little friends. Or perhaps these sneaky thoughts float the currents of cerebrospinal fluid like a lazy river, circulating the brain on brightly colored donuts until “boo” they enter into a lobe of consciousness revealing themselves to be mulled over and depending, analyzed or pushed quickly back into the hiding spot from whence they came. More puzzling, who makes these thoughts? An existential headache, for our minds will not reveal their inner workings to even us, they keep secrets from us. On this recent run where in fantasy I had just married my first love and it was my turn to give a speech to a room romantically lit by candles, to large wooden tables jam packed with flowers and champagne flutes, and the faces I miss so dearly, I indulged. I was entertained and curious to watch how the scene played, and I was only slightly worried. Floating in the neighboring plane of my mind, bounding around like that old screensaver or like a frantic fly that gets indoors during summer when windows lay open, was the analytical and somewhat fearful thought, “is this just play, does this mean something more?” 

I am shy to admit this fantasy or daydream, this musing and woolgathering, for all are innermost ways of thinking, and like exposing a roll of film to light, once inner thoughts are let loose, exposed to outside light, eyes and ears, you cannot unsay them. So in telling you my private thinking for the sake of storytelling is to also reveal a desire, one I do not completely understand but feel it could be my greatest. As a teenager I could not imagine myself in university and every so often concluded this was because I wouldn’t go, I would die before reaching the milestone. Sometimes this reasoning prevails, the only ounce of pessimism in my otherwise positive disposition, and with lingering adolescent angst I wonder if I cannot imagine marrying or becoming a mother because I never will. I use marrying loosely here to describe entering into a lifelong union, I am indifferent to the technicalities and legalities of marriage, I’m not even drawn to the traditional aspects of a wedding which I feel is something coming from an anthropologist. I don’t know with whom, when or where, but I want to build a family of my own: to feel deeply understood by a long term partner, cherished and cared for, someone who gives me permission to melt, I want so badly to shed my lone wolf skin. If you can’t tell I am stalling. I am hesitant to share this slice of inner mind because my first love is not some distant memory lost in time as so many first loves are, he remains my best friend….