Let’s lie down.

I went for a run the other day.  It was my first attempt in two weeks.  I set out with the admirable intention of running 6 solid miles, and as I flew through those first two my goal seemed completely attainable, easy even.  But then something happened around mile 2.3. My breathing became heavy and forced, and my legs moved slowly as if dragging two-ton shackles.  I slowed to a walk.  Step. Step.. Step…. My mind spun. “Ok, I’m stopping.  I’m stopped.  I’m not running, because I stopped…  I’ve never stopped mid-run, but now I’m stopped, and here I am.”  I looked around–at the street, the chipped sidewalk, then the grass.  Everything seemed to tilt, like I’d just taken my turn in a game of dizzy bat.  “I’m sitting down now, sitting down.  I’m sitting down.  And now I’m lying.  I’m lying down.  Is it laying down or lying down?  I don’t know, and I don’t care because I’m lying down in the grass.  This isn’t my grass… this grass I’m lying in, it isn’t mine.  I hope they don’t mind, those people whose grass this is.”  I lay there, arms and legs sprawled out to the sides like a beached starfish under the shade of a tree.  Through the canopy of branches and leaves I could see the clouds floating calmly across the blue sky.  And I lay.

I guess, sometimes, you need to lie down.

So I did.

It was unexpected and unplanned, just as I unexpectedly and unpredictably laid down my pen, my books, and my thoughts over the past few weeks.  It has been three weeks since my last blog post–at least that’s what the calendar tells me.  3 weeks.  Where have I been?

I know I went home to Ohio, I went to the beach, and I went to Ohio again.  I know that I pondered, I caffeinated, and I mourned.  We all mourned.  But where have I been?  Where have all my thoughts been hiding?  I haven’t been present, or focused, or active in any which way, so where the heck have I been?

And what the heck have I been eating?