On Wrunning.
Verb: "The act of running for long periods time for the purpose of preparing one's self to write".
There is a link between writing and running. There is a soft timbre of awakening that happens when a human sets themselves forward in motion. Towards something. Both running and writing are acts of being and acts of movement.
We are wired to search for sustained states of being, and an inevitable hunt for the flow. It strikes me that still after all these years, humans still seek to run. We have many options to make sure we do not need to run, yet still we do. We set aside intentional time to partake in the sacred act of becoming water-like, to flow over land. A simple thing, too tantalising for the human soul to pass up on. So up we stand, chest open wide, leaning forward and step after step we free fall, then catch ourselves.
Running is mostly flying, you spend more time in the air than with your feet on the ground. You are mostly weightless when you are running. Mostly fluid. The same is true with writing. While you are writing, you are mostly floating. An act of surrender, presence, trust, openness and precision. Writing that counts, oozes straight from the core of the writer, into the open pores of the reader’s bones. Writing does something to the writer and the reader, it binds them. In its hunger, good writing contains something extra. A deeper tug, a hum, or buzz barely namable, yet palpably present through out. It has a soul, a spirit of its own. I think this what writing seeks to do. To capture that visceral sensation of soul, invisible yet very real. Running does the same, it binds the physical to the ethereal, reminding the matter of its soul.
Writing is for taking yourself out into the open air, and tracing the stark ridge lines against the bright blue sky. Writing is for following a trail, faintly outlined, mostly on your heart. Following it all the way. You know when you get there. You know the moment when you have reached your destination. Something will happen.
Something always happens.
An opening inside of you, or the sun breaks through the clouds and lands like warm butter on your skin. Or a hare will be there, waiting like the other slipper, tucked inside the sedge grass. Saucepan eyes, tawny brown coat, whiskery nose. And your breathing shallows and your steps become softer as you mostly levitate past, whispering softly “I do not see you, lovely one, I’m just passing by”. Then you will know that you have arrived where you are suppose to be, no longer a harsh blundering mistake, battling its way through the fray. Inside, thread like , you become intwined into the tapestry of it all.
Instead you are both running through the landscape and writing it to life, the beating heart of another’s presence shows you when you are there. Once you arrive, there is no hurry to leave, nor any necessity to stay. You have arrived and that is everything.
Writing makes me long to be running, running clears the path for my words. Somewhere, not too far from here, they both seek to do the same thing. Gather up the loose ends of a human soul and settle it into the now, unbreakably, undeniably, here.
More creations from wrunning:
And Go Often Alone To Wild Places
and so much more.