Dark Places

I posted a note and a new song on my myspace page mentioning/for Jill in Alaska (she's linked over there on the left). She is a much better writer than me.

Dealing with an injury last winter into spring, she writes:

"Fitness is interesting in that it is a different thing to different people. I read about it in the magazines at my gym. To some, fitness is duty, with obsessive calorie counting and a daily slog through 30 minutes of cardio. To others, fitness is fine-tuned precision, with plastic balls and free weights and index cards. Fitness is routine. It is expectation. It is preparation. It is well-toned arms and that perfect snapshot once a year on a beach in Maui. It is an ego boost after beating co-workers in racquetball. It is hope against hope that life can be prolonged. It is a lot of things. And I respect and appreciate each and every one. But they are not my fitness.

My fitness is the drug that keeps me away from dark places. I may be lucky and selfish, but I'm not immune to depression. Maybe it was a questionable path to self-medicate with endorphins. I know they were tough to quit, sitting immobile on the couch as the darkness closed in. Addiction is one theory; coping is another. Humans were not meant to sit in little cubicles and spend sedentary days learning everything they can about all the meanness in the world. But that's how I chose to put food in my belly and shelter over my head. I love it, the news cycle, but sometimes I find myself lost inside of it. Fitness was my escape."

I think this is why I find her blog so fascinating. I mean, beyond the great stories and killer pictures. When I moved to Arizona, I sort of crashed out in Tucson for a few month, and the moved up into Flagstaff to join Ash and Robin. Things were hard. I quit lifting weights, which I had done for a couple of years. I had a truck, so I largely quit cycling. Eventually I started running the trails in Kachina Village. One day I ran farther than usual- about eight miles.

That eight miles is where I found some peace. That eight miles turned into sixteen, a crazy drive up Eldon to the lookout and back down to my truck in Buffalo Park. Turned into hours on trails, geting lost in the clouds, and having that same content, tired grin that Jill has in so many pictures in her blog.

Then I hurt my foot. Really hurt it. Couldn't run, couldn't really even walk without hurting. I was pretty well done, dark clouds gather...and then Met Pamela, who completely rocked my world. And started me skateboarding. Which I of course got into obsessively, many hours at a time in the parks...and I'm good again.

I don't do moderation well. When I stopped drinking, I was just done. Haven't looked back. I did, however, recently radically curtail my exercise. I mean, I'm still commuting to work, but I couldn't afford the outlay for Crossfit again, and things started going downhill. Thanks to this cool person who has been sharing her days with everyone for a few years now, I'm again starting to 'get it'.

"My fitness is the drug that keeps me away from dark places." Amen to that, Sister. Through my songs I can share some of it out, and hope that that can lighten the caves and tunnels those who find it may be in. For myself, music helps, but large scale physical output is the only thing that really drives away the shadows.

Today I ran farther than I have in a single shot since I hurt my foot. Maybe a mile. This week I'll hit some ten or twenty milers on the bike, and run another mile. I'll get soaked to the bones, revel in the green city I live in, and pretend it's a smaller, greener one in South East Alaska.