Notes from run along Charles, 29 August 2013.

Today the earth is made of Viking monosyllables: raw and wet and ripe and full.  The sky is gray and low and close, and the earth is raw and wet and ripe and full.

Today is just this side of the calm before some storm; the wind is gathering, pregnant with anticipation, electric with possibility.

Today is urgent, insistent.  There’s no time to lose.  The iron is hot.

Today, all of us -- rowers, runners, bus drivers, geese -- are conspiring to create the world.  We glance at each other with subtle, knowing smiles.  We barely hold back our laughter at the sheer delight and nerve of building something that no one will believe.

Today the brooding world is tight-wound, wire-taut, skin-tense; at any moment it bursts.

Keep your carefree, blue-skied, springtime afternoons.  Christ comes on a day like today.

Demon.

An ugly thing flew into my heart today and is trying to make its nest there. It found a tiny wound of rejection and solitude and started gnawing at it. It made a fire out of some resentment it had brought along; it threw fuel on the flame from my ample reserves of pride. Then it gathered up all the scraps of self-doubt lying around and nestled down cozily in them.

Go away, thing. Fly off, ugly dark thing.