Feels Like a Season Finale
July 23rd.
It is the 11th day sans Aethos.
And I’m not happy.
I have no patience.
I was tripping.
Hear me out.
Only in the last hour of mercury retrograde did I discover what I needed to learn.
I walked the Aethos over to the shop this morning.
As I set foot into the parking lot, a homeless man asked if I could spare $2 so he could grab a bite.
I told him I’d catch him on my way out.
After dropping the bike off and explaining to Jacob all that had went right (and wrong), I made way to the exit just in time to bump into my friend Cindy.
We briefly caught up and remarked on how outrageously hot it was…
“I love the heat but… I feel like I just haven’t been outside enough and it snuck up on me. I felt like I was melting with every step I took walking my bike here.”
We both went on our ways.
I stepped back into the sauna and signaled to the homeless man, that I was going into to the gas station to grab some cash.
“Do ya’ll do cashback?”
“No…”
I go over to the ATM and pay a fee to access my cash…
4 fucking dollars on a 20 dollar withdrawal.
Granted.. I’ll be reimbursed and I think most banks do reimburse for ATM fees these days
Is this just a way to … launder money?
Anyway…
I grab a bottle of water. Break the 20 and set aside two singles for the homeless man.
I step back out into the oven and immediately regret getting only one bottle of water..
“eh I just gotta get home.. this dude needs it more than I do.”
I walk over to the homeless man, and hand him the $2 and the bottle of water…
“Thank you brother. Thank you so much.”
“No problem man.”
I turn around to head home and just like clockwork I hear
“Bakkar! Do you want a ride home?”
“Sure!”
“Oh.. I think I have those same running shoes but in a different colorway. They’re the best. The last forever.”
“They really do.. I had a pair before these the 13’s and you know .. they say running shoes are only good for 500 miles or so but I swear to you, I put about 1500 miles on them. They just never quit on me. I’ve opted only for Adidas since.”
Cindy gives me a ride home, the A/C legitimately godsent.
Patiently…
But not very patiently…
I standby awaiting to hear that my bike is ready.
Jacob did say it’d be tomorrow… but…
Sometimes you get lucky.
I could feel the…
angst.
The unsettling …
feeling
of existence.
“Dad why do you have your shoes on?”
I’ve spent the whole day in my adidas and a pair of running shorts..
The outfit I found best for the trip to the bike shop…
“I don’t know…”
I spent the day slowly spiraling.
Slowly losing any semblance of sanity.
Man just wants to ride his bike.
At one point, I questioned why the 11th day without my Aethos felt just as bad as the 11th day cold turkey…
That didn’t really sit right with me.
The thought occurs that maybe I ought to go for a run…
and all I have to do…
is take my shirt off.
“Dad are you going for a run!?”
“Yes.”
“I knew it!”
---
“And I find myself on the last day of retrograde in the last hour, the hottest point of the day, the hottest day of the year so far… going for a run. Obviously there’s something to learn here…”
The first mile never counts.
“What the fuck… why haven’t I been running?”
Despite the heat, the fresh legs…
I felt everything that’d been bothering me melting away…
The pain I thought I’d been experiencing in my elbow, the stiffness in my back…
My attitude and general displeasure with everything..
All melting away…
“I’m so silly.. so stubborn. This was always an option, but I allowed myself.. to get spoiled. Just wanting to ride the fucking bike… as if .. I’m above running.”
There was nobody on the trail..
Nothing is more satisfying than showing up to the trail to get some miles in and there’s no one else in sight … due to the weather.
The heat…
The rain…
The cold…
Fairweather friends.
Another mile passes and I find myself frustrated genuinely that it took 11 days for me to get to this point. 11 days to … be put into the position of reacting.
I could have just done this so long ago.
In my frustration I find myself…
seeking punishment…
Quite some time since I’ve last run…
and a 5k probably would have sufficed
“5 miles. No fucking stopping. Just decide to be acclimated to the heat.”
“Wait… I just … maybe I should just enjoy this all.”
I stride into a pocket of cool air in the shade…
It feels like natural air conditioning.
Godsent.
“I don’t really have … anything to prove to anyone. I feel better… I could walk…”
But still…
“But you gotta start running again once you get to that orange sign”
I walk for a bit..
Pondering what would have had to happen to me in order for me to have to constantly be in search of serotonin through some sort of self-punishment…
Why I have to let myself get so strung out sometimes .. just to bask in the … normalcy when the floodgates are opened.
“For better or for worse… my brain needs what it needs and will … get it, hell or high water.”
The orange sign arrives and I start running again…
It isn’t very long before I stop…
“Eh I didn’t have to do that…”
I walk a little longer truly just enjoying …
the heat.
The sun is glaring on my back and I feel my internal body temperature creeping up…
I feel fine… but I can .. feel
I pace along and get back into a run when the trail becomes shaded.
The restart is a little rough but the lactic acid quickly flushes and I feel better than the first go..
I mentally take note of this…
I’m moving along at a much quicker pace than before and feel the pace progressing as I go on…
—
I start working myself however…
Fooled by the shade, the heat starts creeping up on me again…
I look forward and see another runner ahead of me…
“I gotta at least pass that guy before the bridge..”
I buckle down and bite a little more off..
The bridge roughly 400 meters out, the runner 150 ahead of me..
I pass him with about 40 meters to spare..
I stop..
And immediately regret my actions…
I feel a distant nausea…
The wooze.
Tunnel vision…
I lift my arms up and keep moving, making my way up the 1st street bridge..
My conscience loud and clear…
“You’re an idiot. Do you not see that you just like to get high… in one way or another… Here you are.. in the heat, running random people down, so you can feel good about yourself. Wondering why… the 11th day without your bike feels like… the 11th day sober… and now… subjecting yourself to … “rapid heat acclimation” … self-punishment. You can just… enjoy things. You can run. You can ride the bike. You can enjoy things and not… make them .. your drug. It’s not all or nothing all the time… Enjoy the things.”
I walk across the bridge… reflecting on that message.
The manner in which… everything..
somehow..
gets…
optimized past the point of experience…
the one thing…
I have the biggest problem with …
I still find myself guilty of…
finding the optimal delivery of serotonin and … getting lost in the chemical induced euphoria
rather than the …
experience.
“harder is better… do it everyday… be the best at it…”
sure but also…
how fucking meaningless is everything if there’s no novelty… no entropy…
no room for those feelings to be found in other places?
A great C-130 crew chief is a jack of all trades and a master of none.
A crew chief that’s only good at being a crew chief, is fucking worthless.
Anybody can gas a plane, launch it, and remove and replace a panel...
But to understand the various systems… how they all interact with one another to make sense of it all
To make a specialist obsolete…
That is the way…
As I’ve made … the chemicals obsolete…
I gotta find some balance…
Some redundancies to deliver serotonin without…
Being dependent on only one source.
Otherwise…
I’m just…
chasing ghosts.
but why is it that …
I find myself
hooked on one thing at a time?
And why are they things that seem to be…
self-punishing…
It doesn’t have to be this way…
Walking across the bridge I laugh at how …
the retrograde simply revealed to me…
what I already knew… but in a way I hadn’t realized it…
I’d already addressed how although I was free of alcohol and weed…
It still seemed as if an addiction lingered in some form…
I identified that it may be in the bike…
Going without the bike made it much more clear
but in a way that I probably
would have never …
observed
because it isn’t actually the bike…
It’s the idea that…
hmmm
it’s not even self-punishment..
it’s…
a feeling…
what’s derived from alcohol and pot…
a feeling
what’s derived from running
a feeling
what’s derived from the bike
a feeling
what’s derived from … productivity
a feeling
is it simply the feeling of it all?
And if so … why is it that
I get hyperfixated on one thing at time
for a feeling…
why not a medley of them all…
is it the…
guarantee of the feeling?
Knowing that it’s sure to be delivered through whatever vessel it is at the time?
Why do I have to have such a large dose of …
the feeling?
I find myself at the end of the bridge.
Questions … answered.
Questions … posed.
I start running again.
When it doesn’t feel good anymore… rather than seeking the … pleasure in punishment…
I stop.
And I walk for a bit.
I think about how …
I started… and that’s good.
I walked a bit and that was good.
No reason to feel bad about that.
I ran hard and that was good.
I feel good.
I start running again.
“With everything … behind me. It’s always good to finish strong.”
I pick the pace up a little bit…
I eye the blue recycling bin I normally stop at.
About 20 meters out…
I think to myself
“I could stop here… and chill if I wanted. And that’s fine. That’s fine so long as I finish strong.”
I finish strong.
I jump in the pool.
I do a couple laps and allow myself to sink down to the bottom accepting that when I resurface…
I’ll have…
resurfaced.
I make my way back home.
I shower and then go to make a glass of chocolate milk…
“you should put some cacao in there… for your serotonin…”
Sounds good.
I pull a tray of brownies out of the microwave…
As I cut the first one I’ll have had out, I realize the universe has conspired for me to have the middle piece…
Godsent.
I sit down.. to type this…
and hear my daughter pose a question to Delta…
“Is this mommy music?”
“Yes”
I tune my ear to hear a little better.
Age of Aquarius.
The Fifth Dimension.
Ace of Pentacles