b e h n d i n g

first sunny day in two weeks.  in the afternoon, i found a quiet spot near the center of campus and made myself comfortable on a wooden bench with norwegian wood and a mango sherbet from 7-11.  lying stomach down, the warmth of the sun spreading easy like smooth peanut butter onto my face, arms, and back, i leisurely make my way a second time through the murakami novel.  it reads different from the first time, almost like a different book, and i like it better now.

i think sometimes there are too many options in life.  having two choices is nice, but three just makes things complicated.

on my run, a little pop-eyed dog came puttering toward me.  picture us moving on the same imaginery tightrope in opposite directions, trajectories marked for collision, and you see my dilemma.  do i move out of the way for a dog?  or do i keep my path and hope for its sake that it budges?  i was the loser b/c i was the only one who thought about it, but i chose to keep running the path i had designated for myself, to not yield to the inferior species.  a couple steps before the bottom of my sneaker would’ve nailed its crown, the dog skirted out of my way.  i gave a little smirk, looked up, and almost jumped in fright when i saw the owner’s eyes looking hard at me.  the message was clearly that i shouldn’t be picking on those who are not my size.

when i was in the library a few weeks ago to pick up a book, my eyes caught hemingway’s a moveable feast sitting a couple shelves over or below the one my book was on.  thinking it was food-related, i figured why not, and grabbed that one off the shelf as well.  it sat untouched in my room until a couple days ago, and though it took me awhile to get into it — turns out it was not food-related per se — i was reminded of how captivating hemingway’s matter-of-fact-ness can be.  simple and stingy with words, he strikes me as a mark bittman-type: fresh, choice words are his ingredients and his dishes, however minimalist, are often compelling, and on rare occasions, intoxicating.

major props to those people who exercise first thing in the morning.  i have done it on occasion, and am resigned to the fact that exercising in the morning is much more of a struggle than the same workout in the afternoon or evening.  my mind is usually sharper earlier on in the day, but my body moves like deadweight for those first few hours after i wake up.  My limbs feel heavier, still soggy from sleepiness maybe, and so it takes more mental fortitude and physical exertion to jumpstart them into action.  at this point, though, i’m just happy that there are points in my day when i think ‘run’.

what makes my run whenever i’m lucky enough to catch a sighting: a scrawny, balding asian man with thick-rimmed glasses, total throwbacks that remind me of my mother’s in her photos from the 70s, running with his short shorts (a fashion ‘must’ for middle-aged male runners in HK), dark longish short-sleeved T, and his quirky, irregular form.  he runs with his head tilted upward, i’m guessing to keep his glasses perched, however precariously, on the tip of his nose (though “tip” is relative – he is asian after all).  his most memorable feature, though, is the gap-toothed grin that’s permanently plastered on his face.  on a straightaway, i can spot that grin from quite a distance away and i can’t help grinning myself as our converging steps bring us closer and closer together.  we cross paths uneventfully and i can’t tell if he’s grinning at me as he passes by, but it doesn’t really matter because i still get such a kick out of him and i’m sure i’m not the only one he humors.  maybe he has an agenda, a philosophy, or something that compels him to look so ridiculously happy when he runs, or maybe running just gives him such immense, uncontainable pleasure.  or maybe that’s his default facial expression, the same way mine is reputedly “cool”.

i also enjoy dog-watching.  a muscular silky-furred husky hunched over on the sidewalk obviously straining, the poor constipated creature.  it’s reassuring to know even the best and brightest have their off days.  a stump of a maltese, its tied bangs defying gravity with their skyward propulsion, not unlike my basketball hairdo in 4th or 5th grade, during that forgettable phase when i growing out my former dark vader ‘do, as my brother liked to call it.

this blog has unintentionally become a kind of running journal; i remember having this thought some time ago, but since i had only recently begun to blog regularly, it didn’t register as true.  as for why this might be, i speculate it’s rooted in the difficulty of writing when i purposefully set myself to the task.  writing when i’m focused on writing usually is an arduous, unproductive, and unfulfilling activity; the time:word output ratio is unreasonably high and i often can’t justify to myself the time i just spent not writing. it makes me wonder how often professional writers feel similarly stuck when they sit down to write, and how they break out of a funk or train themselves to push through it.  also, a lot of thoughts just occur to me as i run, and these occurring thoughts happen to be more bloggable than my deliberate thoughts, the ones i think when i’m trying to.  there’s a certain freeing of the mind when the body is at work that lends itself to insights and observations one might not otherwise have access to.

the past few days have been about recovering from my 3-vacations-in-1 rollercoaster vacation and an intensive training seminar over the weekend (google landmark forum if you’re interested).  my priorities now are lining up something for next year, fulfilling the tail end of my research obligations, and seeing more of hong kong.  and i’m on it!