Nietzsche said, “It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.”

I never miss my evening dose of road tar. It is a tonic for my soul. I’ve hardly missed a session in two years.

I leave the headphones at home to let my internal music play. I am in the world but not of it.

Tonight, I am once again in the coliseum to do battle with my sanity.

I bring myself to a state of “no mind” in the beginning, to free myself of the nocturnal depression that can cripple me.

I start to imagine my arteries lit up and pumping. My heart is huge and hungry as I feed it the blood it needs for this physical undertaking.

Then I feel my muscles and ligaments warm to the tempo of my padding, joyful feet.

When I start to feel the rise in body temperature and the familiar and welcome moisture of salty sweat, I open the flood gates…slowly.

One incredible thought after the other comes tumbling out. Like IMAX. Front row. Buckle up, Bobo.

Answers to questions I haven’t even thought of asking fill me up. Tracer fire, coming from everywhere. Non stop.

Soon, I’m drowning in epiphany. I don’t realize it at that moment, but all of these thoughts are connected. I become frantic. TMI.

I try to keep track but it’s like chasing chickens in a great big barn yard.

I panic at the thoughts of loss. Already? These thoughts aren’t even fully conceived and yet I mourn. It’s like the Muddy Water’s song “Can’t lose what you never had.”

But I know from the way my gut is initially processing this information, that I’m onto something. Huge. Oh, torture.

Now I have to focus. There are loose threads everywhere. I make a beginning a middle and an end. Always. I break the information into blocks that can be arranged to tell the story.

I talk out loud. I yell things to make them stick. I cram sentences into my jaw to burn them into my temporal lobe. Where’s my crowbar?

All this is taking place on a dark road in the middle of that might. But I have no idea where I am at that moment.

After years of “runstorming”, you think I would have gained some confidence in pulling a blog together. The more incredible the ideas, the more elusive they seem. It can be maddening.

I just need to keep these thoughts  together until I can sprinkle them onto my keyboard, once buried in the bowels of my man-cave.

Which is still three miles away.   🙂