Born Yesterday: the autumn of me

The goal: Every day, one new thought, some of which I will even post.

Day 1: Passion ebbs and flows, comes and goes, throws cool out the moving window. One deep breath was all I needed to know it's ebbing my way. The autumn of Steve. Finally.

Maybe it was a trek back to the campus of Gloucester County Community College, site of many meaningless cross-country meets that unmanned me in high school, that dusted off some familiar emotions tonight.

The charm of a school that boasts nothing is its welcomeness. Come, go, loiter, whatever; it's cool. It's like a friend – a friend who will probably never help me advance professionally, but one who will always be there. Why? Because he’s not going anywhere. Oh.

Compare a walk through a community college with that of a four-year school: no eyeballing by security; no brochure pushing by soapbox psychos; no professing of a higher degree by professors; and much less hamming by acoustic Casanovas, I'm sure.

This was the big fish revisiting the small pond, the home it once so desperately sought escape from for reasons that now escape him. All it knows is that something has returned with its homecoming. In the back of its mind it knows that it’s no bigger, that any change in confidence is due to a change in atmosphere, but as long as the thought stays back, it can live with that. Why? Because it's a fucking fish. Oh.

I was thinking about none of this when strapping on my running shoes tonight. I also wore black short shorts, a clip-on MP3 player and connecting earphones that hooked around the lobes. No shirt. After all, this wasn't Denny's or anything upscale.

The sun was a couple lullabies – or whatever – from fully setting and it only got darker once in the wooded trails. (Because night is arriving and I'm running in the shade. Keep up.) The seven-mile course is comprised of a few memorable stretches: three rolling trails disjointed by roads; one abandoned railroad; another trail; and one paved right angle back to my car. I feel like you should know this.

It was tough to see in Trail 1, nearly impossible by Trail 3 (Mile 3.5). Despite squinting worse than most moles, I always believed I could see in the dark, not in the infrared night-vision sense, but more like in a superhuman way to anticipate – and to adjust to – new landscape flying by at a lightning fast 8 mph. Blind at day, visually impaired at night. This was my gift, surely courtesy of some radioactive spider.

By the time I stepped off the railroad, about 8:30 p.m., the shades of pink, purple and orange had streaked themselves off the spherical blackboard. There were no answers given, only questions.

I thought about forest fires and whether there could be a scenario bleak enough to justify setting one. If hopeless and closer to death than any exit, no one – not even the charter president of GCC’s environmental club – could rule it out. And I hope he would strike the match if it meant finding a way out. I might feel another way when hearing it on the news the next day – “Residents of Sewell were left homeless Friday night after a fire set in the GCC woods engulfed the town,” – and I’d probably grab my pitchfork and join the witch hunt too, but for that moment of desperation, I’d understand. How could I blame him? I can’t fault someone for wanting to save himself.

I thought about old horror flicks and how every heroine chooses the deep, dark woods when fleeing the serial killer. And how nimbly they tiptoe around each ditch, root and cobweb before falling to Jason, Michael Myers or Michael Jackson. Promising humor, the thought instead backfired, ringing trite and painting me as a hack running from something as well. Scary.

It was about then when my vision got hazy. Veiled in darkness, the trees were moving, almost breathing, in my mind, only in my dark mind. I couldn’t explain it; the only mushrooms I eat come on pizza. Needing clarity, I turned off the music and my sight returned. It felt like paying a ransom. I imagine every deaf artist and blind musician must make a similar transaction.

Luckily, my neck stayed unbroken back to the empty college lot. Everything was in its right place. I could breathe easy then and there. I was finished.