Blackbird

I've got the kids this weekend and needed to get a long run in, so I set my alarm for 6:30 am and up I rose. I've been struggling with some injuries, and by mile two I could feel/hear the outer left knee talk louder about its aches and pains. I started to doubt whether I'd go through with my original plan, which was to go to Picnic Point and back as I've done on multiple occasions but also to extend it from 8 to 11 miles by tacking on a trip to Memorial Union and back.

I made it out to the Point and had stopped to stretch when I ran into a friend I hadn't seen in a while. She lives on the near Eastside, meaning she was headed to the Union, so I took that as a sign I should/could go the distance and told her I'd run there with her.

I noticed my aches and pains a lot less, running at a clip to keep up with her younger self and chatting about boys, girls cutting their hair short, and the process of getting a Ph.D. She's at the "supposed to be studying for Prelims but generally just freaking out" stage, and although my own process didn't involve prelims, I'm all too familiar with the psychological hazing which is, without a doubt, the toughest part of becoming a Dr., at least a Dr. of Philosophy. I tried to talk her down from where she was, gave her some practical ideas about how to tackle the mountain of work ahead of her, told her what I think it's really all about and told her she was bright and insightful and dedicated to making the world better and that that's just the kind of Drs we need so I knew she was gonna make it.

As we parted ways and I headed on the long trek home from the Union, I thought about my own Ph.D. process, and how good it feels to be on the other side, and to be able to help her see what was important and useful. It almost made me ok with every year that my legs were reminding me they'd been alive all the way home.

I was also grateful that all this thinking had a soundtrack. Because my phone con Slacker is in the shop at the moment, I had to make do with my son's ipod, which actually contains a bunch of his Dad's music because that's where he loaded it up a few years ago when he got it:

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

Yep, the Beatles provided a pretty perfect song for me to hear, because part of what I learned when I got my Ph.D. was that a big part of moments you wait your whole life to arise are bullshit, because they are so mired in expectation that they don't just get to be what they are:

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free

I'm not sure about blackbirds, but I'm pretty sure for us humans, we're as free as we allow ourselves to be. So often, though, we choose to fly back into the cage. It's comfy. And even if it isn't comfy, it's what we expect it to be, and that's a comfort in itself.

Apropos of the cage analogy, I realized again during the boy-focused portion of my run/chat this morning that I'm just not managing to believe that it is over with my beloved. So once I was solo again and done with the academic portion of my thoughts, I reminded myself about what my acupuncturist told me last month:

"An empty heart can actually be a really beautiful place, but it can feel scary to go there."

Uh-huh.

Cage, anyone?

This also makes me think of this poem from Rumi, which I read during the Svasana portion of my couples yoga class a couple of months ago:

Inside this new love, die
Your way begins on the other side
Become the sky
Take an axe to the prison wall
Escape
Walk out like someone suddenly
born into colour
Do it now
You're covered with thick cloud
Slide out the side.
Die, and be quiet
Quietness is the surest sign
that you have died
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence
The speechless full moon comes out now.

Beautiful, eh?

Speaking of beautiful -- I ran into another friend out running -- a colleague who is moving to Boston tomorrow -- so I felt compelled to stop and chat with him on my journey home. All told, with all the running, chatting and stretching, I was gone for over two hours, but my (not so) little birdies were still fast asleep when I got home!

Oooh! And guess who covered this classic? That's right, Eddie!