Thing 10 - Reflections on a morning's run

8:17; Thursday, July 9.

I'm just in from an early morning run before the day heats up to its projected 106 degrees.

A variety of running paths at my disposal, this morning's route led me through the wilds of George Bush Park. The wilds exist between the freeway and another major thoroughfare? Yes, to a small degree. While only three miles across ( at least on this extension of the trail), the park is home to woodland, wetland, and grassland alike. Though just a few hundred feet away from civilization, one can't help but be awed by this little haven.

On this morning's trek alone, I was greeted by the songbirds already busy with the day's work, saw a small deer bound across the trail ahead of me, discovered a nutria or other varmint gliding along with the current of the bayou, and watched some pike-like fish making a meal of unsuspecting bait fish. I heard hoots and howls of every order, small splashes of water, the rustling of light (very light) winds through the trees.

Occasionally a cyclist or two would whizz past me, heads tucked down and legs pumping, inspired no doubt by Mr. Armstrong's gains in the Tour de France. Others , though, adopted a more stately pace, allowing me to hear snippets of their conversations: "So, when they say 'the eagle flies on Friday night' they are talking about a paycheck?"

But mainly it was just me and my thoughts alone on the trail, trying to make peace with each other. You see, I'd been up since the wee hours of the dawn trying to compose this post about Second Life, and I still hadn't come up with anything satisfactory. I hesitated to express my real opinions, fearing that I might seem unduly prejudiced or jaded or antiquated in my notions about social order.

And I still hesitate to do so, but I will say this: I think of all that I experienced this morning in a 50 minute run -- all of it was real. Everything I saw, heard, and smelled occurred naturally, without the halting and exaggerated effect created in cyberspace. My eyes blinked naturally in their protective fashion, my arms swung easily at my side. My head always turned the direction I intended it to and never once did my body continue to move forward while my face was turned 180 degrees in opposition. Sounds and sights came as they should, moving in and out of perspective with the appropriate speed or distance. Footfalls sounded like footfalls, tires turned on gravel with a certain crunching that only real force can create. Humans and animals alike moved with the grace and symmetry that only the living can appreciate, and none of them were marked by oddly angular features.

As for that other world, the Second Life world, my time there was marked only by anxiety, frustration, and a loss of equilibrium. Maybe with enough practice I could get comfortable there, but do I really want to? Is that really how I want to spend my time, even in the name of education - a seemingly noble pursuit? I don't think so. I have bigger work to do, and it rests firmly on this side of the keyboard.

And so, since I haven't quoted Thoreau this year, let me conclude with his wisdom:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. ( from "Life in the Woods --Where I Lived, and What I Lived For")