26
I dream I’m reading. It’s not like when I’m dreaming I’m running. I know where that comes from – the accident that deprived me of the ability to run. As a kid, I could just about outrun everybody – not in terms of speed (although I was quickish), but endurance. I could run and run and run, could push through fatigue, and feel like nothing could stop me. Driving me harder, further, and sometimes faster, was my stubbornness. When I was just eighteen or nineteen, sometimes I’d break into a sprint, like anxiety was a fuel I needed to burn off before it incinerated me. In sport, I was always…
17
I dream again I’m running. There is a freedom in being so unencumbered, in feeling nothing but the speed of zipping through the world with an abandon I wouldn’t be able to duplicate in life, even if my right leg was still capable. This is all that’s important now: the motion. I revel in the velocity. There’s very little awareness of my surrounds, but it’s open terrain. Concrete pavements so that I’m thinking civilization but, distantly, mountains also. I don’t think there are any other people here with me either. I think this place has been built just for me, and for just this purpose. Running. If I could, I…