I spent the day at the Library of Congress. The hottest day we’ve had all year, and early in the morning, because I’d skipped my morning run, I decided to walk to the library from New Hampshire and M. I had snagged my aunts assistant’s parking garage space for the day, a coup. After a short breakfast with my aunt, feeling like wonder women or something, I put on my sneakers and started to walk.
Bad idea.
The approximately 3 mile trip is not a bad walk on a tepid day, but it was next to impossible today. As I approached Farragut Metro a women walking a few feet in front of me passed out. I wouldn’t have been headed there anyway had I not had doubts about my ability to face the no sidewalks, and stone blockades, on a near 100 degree day. The woman was easily revived with water, but my decision was made. Metro for me.
By the time I arrived home this evening, after taking a very unpleasant phone call, from an extremely unforgiving individual, it had started to storm, got dark, and I was just too tired.
The consequence of my resisting the loss of a quart or two of sweat, refusing to risk dehydration, or death, while pounding the steaming pavement, is the overwhelming lethargy that occurs when I don’t run, or at least walk a few miles. Here I sit in the claws of a beastly, all encompassing lassitude, frosted with remnants of a conversation with an implacable friend, now possible a former friend.
If only people were like beach sand, feeble, easily forgiving, with memories that refused to hold their shape. You can draw lines in the sand, dig holes even, and shortly the lines disappear, the holes are filled. The sand starts fresh. Why must people be like iron, cast to hardness, forever shaped by one eutectic memory?
Why is life, and everything in it, not a beach?
peace
