It's Just Another Day

Have been out of town twice over the last two weeks, which has been a pleasure yet a challenge to my equilibrium. Was going to do a race today, which got scaled down to a run with Z, which dwindled to just another solitary lope along my same-old, same-old path north to Albany.

What I saw: chickens on Acton Street. A flock of them, on the south side of the road, trying to cross over to the north side. I now know why the chickens crossed the road! To get to the hippie house, of course. Then I saw, I mean really saw, the new-ish temple on University Ave. It's a building that has been transformed from one kind of temple to another; it used to be a temple of forgetfulness (also known by the name of Jayvee Liquors, the biggest, most well-stocked boozetorium in Berkeley), but is now a temple serving a congregation of worshippers (it's known as Netivot Shalom). It's a striking building, one I've passed by but never really looked at. It has something of a tall ship about it, somehow, all upthrusts and spars. Not long after that, once I had done a little hip-hop along the new bike trail that follows the Santa Fe right-of-way (I LOVE that little path, all four blocks of it), I saw a guy at the tennis courts, who I could swear was Rickey Henderson in dreadlocks, teaching a matron how to play tennis.

Not long after I saw Rickey, my mind wandered off and forgot to notice what the rest of me was doing. I got caught in a fantasy of writing a memoir couched in fictional terms, that is, written with some names and chronologies switched around but containing some profound nuggets drawn from the real life I've been occupied with these last six decades. By the time I emerged from my debate with myself over the value of self-publishing vs. succumbing to the many offers that were bound to roll in from major publishing houses, I was pretty far north on the path and found myself struck by some actual bright autumn leaves overhead. The day was gray, and they shouted out to my retinas, startling and pleasing me as I bobbed on by.

I saw a man accompanied by two young boys and a dog evidently named Roscoe, a black lab who didn't seem to know that his name was being called over and over ("Roscoe! Come here! Roscoe! No, boy! Roscoe!").

I got called away mid-post when I was writing this on Sunday. It's now Tuesday, and I've already been for another run, so feel I need to shift gears here in order to sign off. Also, I'm busybusybusy today (even did a stretch of about five minutes during my morning's 60-minute run at an increased pace in order to finish faster).

Let me just say that the last thing I saw Sunday was a young man unclear on which century we're in--he was bopping on down the path with a blaring boom box on his shoulder. Uh, can you say iPod?

The sky is gray, and I'm off into the world, hoping to see the sun at some point as I journey along. It's just another day, and I'm grateful for it.