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Adventures in the next step, the next sentence, the next second.

I have at title. That never happens. I routinely forget to put titles on my pieces. Hey, it worked

for Emily Dickinson. But I have a title.

For ten years now I have been a runner. I started running to lose the ten pounds I added as afreshman in college. Now I still run to revise my body, but I also do it for the sheer love of each

step.

That first "run" back in 1992 began with me trotting down a little used bike path in my home

town. The first hundred yards or so were great. Then trouble set in. My lungs constricted and

tried to suck my breath back in as I was trying to get it out and breathe in more. After the next

hundred yards I began to pick out objects and try to make it to them. I would tell my shriveling

lungs and gyrating heart,I'll stop after that big oak. Okay, I promise I'll stop after we get to that

rock. Okay, okay, I swear we'll stop when we reach that pine tree. All right, I really mean it this

time. We'll stop when we reach that footbridge. I promise. As soon as I stepped on the

footbridge, my body revolted against my broken promises. The footbridge was roughly half a

mile from where I began. Suddenly it felt like someone was chopping into the right side of my

abdomen with an axe, and I had to get my breaths in between the swings. Of course, now my

lungs were really pissed off and hoarding everything, oxygen and as well as carbon dioxide.

Sweat cascaded down my back and chest. It stung my eyes. The path began to weave, even

though I was clutching the bridge's railing. I didn't know if I was going to faint, explode,

implode, or just plain drop dead. Finally, my body's revolt subsided.

Clutching my aching side, I promptly turned around and limped back to my car.

Ten days later my side was healed, and I began to run past the footbridge. Initially, my lungs and

heart would get rowdy when I reached the bridge, but soon the failed to even recognize it. I

began to look forward to seeing just how far I could make it past the footbridge before my lungs

and heart had a meltdown.

Then something strange happened. Half a mile became a mile. In late June a mile became three.

Soon three miles became four. By the end of the summer I no longer relegated myself to a

secluded bike path. I was running from one end of Red Lake Falls to the other, up hill both ways

because of the two rivers that cut through the town, eight miles in all.

Now instead of damn near ripping themselves free from my wheezing body when I finished, my

lungs and heart were functioning perfectly. As if to say, is that all you got?

My plan to revise my body and drop the freshman 10 pounds worked. My calves grew several

inches and I lost 20 pounds. And I didn't even know what I was doing.

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I just loved the feel of accomplishment when I finished running. How there wasn't a dry spot left

on my body. How my tennies were damn near worn down to nothing at the end of the summer.

How I lost four to six pounds in sweat every trip. Most of all I loved the runner's high. I didn't

even know what this was until three years later when I subscribed to Runner's World and began

talking to track people and finding out how to really run.

The runner's high kept me running long after I dropped the weight. Thinking about it now, it

seems to me like reaching the apex of life. After three miles, my body and mind are in perfect

sync. The world blurs and I am just an organism functioning at its maximum potential. The

buildings and trees and traffic fade. Even the music on my headphones fades. My thoughts fade.

I know longer have to barter with my organs in order to make it another hundred yards. I am

perfectly being. My feet routinely fall in the same steps on every run. In fact, when it is going

well, when I get to certain junctures in the run, I can glance at my watch and know precisely what

time it is by my distance and the feeling in my legs. For me it is almost mystical. Like being

close to God.

Over the last decade, running has become an integral part of my existence. Living in Minnesota

makes it damn near impossible to run outside three months out of the year. So I tend to put on

10-15 pounds over my hibernation period. But every spring I am back at it. The funny thing now

is my mind remembers the state of bliss that is the runner's high, but my body forgets. Every

March I find myself bartering with my heart and lungs as we get near the first mile mark. They

always win, though to my mind it seems like we haven't even begun. But in a few weeks, I am up

around the four mile length. Like clock work, as soon as my body survives the first mile or two,

my body and mind fall into that familiar, divine rhythm and we're off.

I only experienced this divine feeling, or "flow" during one other activity: writing.

Writing is a struggle to get past the first couple paragraphs. My body has no problem typing for

hours on end. It is my mind this time that revolts. With every new paragraph comes the doubt.

This is shit. Stop it. What do you think you're doing? Are you really going to leave that sentence

that way? Oh, you just ended that sentence with a preposition. Hey, you just mixed up your

metaphors dummy. Who is going to want to read this drivel anyway? Just quit and watch TV

already. . .

But this time it's my body's turn to pay my mind back. My fingers keep hacking away. And just

like after the first mile or two, I enter the runner's high; after the first page or two, I enter the

writer's high.

Soon my mind begins to cease shouting obscenities at the screen. After a two pages it just

grumbles somewhere deep down in my consciousness. Eventually, it either gives in to my ego

and decides, hey, this isn't so bad after all.

Ultimately, my mind and body get lost in the writing. At a certain point I cease to even see the

words I'm typing. I am aware of them but the images in my head take over for the words. Then I

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am lost in those memories or scenes that I either recall or create. This too is like being in the

presence of God. Time and space seem to fade. I often sit down to write with a cup of coffee or

tea. When I reach to take my first sip, the drink will be cold. I am amazed to realize I forgot all

about it and just wrote for what seemed like ten minutes, but was really an hour. Or I will start

typing in the afternoon and then realize I need a book from my car. When I step outside it will

be pitch black out. When writing time seems to liquefy and flow by. All that I am conscious ofis the story. My mind ceases to question and edit. Intuitively it begins to place the words and

punctuation and grammar in the precise form it needs to be. In fact, I have often found myself

reading over a rough draft and realizing that there is a flow of voice or images or style that I

wasn't even trying to evoke, but came out anyway.

I have been writing on and off, mostly off until this year, for 20 years now. My love affair began

with hijacking stories or ideas from movies or the books my brother would read and tell me about

and putting my own spin on them (see illustration). Then I began to slowly become a little more

creative and adventuresome. I branched out into poetry, song lyrics (I would create fictitious

names for band members, I myself was Mick Monroe, I would draw the album covers, write the

liner notes -- from "Thank Yous" to production credits to the copyright date, and then write down

the dates and names of the cities I planned to tour), horror stories (one of which was the pivotal

moment of my life (and a topic of another essay) when my ninth grade English teacher had us

write a prologue to Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" and I produced a six page prologue, which

she read in front of the whole class and said it was the grossest thing she had ever read from a

student and that she loved every second of it), thesis/support papers (which, like the Sirens in The

Odyssey can lure poor souls/writers to believe their music/form is lovely and then dash their

ships and flesh/voices and love for writing to pieces on the rocks before they even knew what

happened), to creative nonfiction, from which I tend to most often find myself in the writer's

nirvana.