Adventures in the next step, the next sentence, the next second. I have at title. That never happens.

I routinely forget to put titles on my pieces. Hey, it worked for Emily Dickinson. But I have a title. For ten years now I have been a runner. I started running to lose the ten pounds I added as a freshman in college. Now I still run to revise my body, but I also do it for the sheer love of each step. That first "run" back in 1992 began with me trotting down a little used bike path in my home town. The first hundred yards or so were great. Then trouble set in. My lungs constricted and tried to suck my breath back in as I was trying to get it out and breathe in more. After the next hundred yards I began to pick out objects and try to make it to them. I would tell my shriveling lungs and gyrating heart, I'll stop after that big oak. Okay, I promise I'll stop after we get to that rock. Okay, okay, I swear we'll stop when we reach that pine tree. All right, I really mean it this time. We'll stop when we reach that footbridge. I promise . As soon as I stepped on the footbridge, my body revolted against my broken promises. The footbridge was roughly half a mile from where I began. Suddenly it felt like someone was chopping into the right side of my abdomen with an axe, and I had to get my breaths in between the swings. Of course, now my lungs were really pissed off and hoarding everything, oxygen and as well as carbon dioxide. Sweat cascaded down my back and chest. It stung my eyes. The path began to weave, even though I was clutching the bridge's railing. I didn't know if I was going to faint, explode, implode, or just plain drop dead. Finally, my body's revolt subsided. Clutching my aching side, I promptly turned around and limped back to my car. Ten days later my side was healed, and I began to run past the footbridge. Initially, my lungs and heart would get rowdy when I reached the bridge, but soon the failed to even recognize it. I began to look forward to seeing just how far I could make it past the footbridge before my lungs and heart had a meltdown. Then something strange happened. Half a mile became a mile. In late June a mile became three. Soon three miles became four. By the end of the summer I no longer relegated myself to a secluded bike path. I was running from one end of Red Lake Falls to the other, up hill both ways because of the two rivers that cut through the town, eight miles in all. Now instead of damn near ripping themselves free from my wheezing body when I finished, my lungs and heart were functioning perfectly. As if to say, is that all you got? My plan to revise my body and drop the freshman 10 pounds worked. My calves grew several inches and I lost 20 pounds. And I didn't even know what I was doing.

I just loved the feel of accomplishment when I finished running. How there wasn't a dry spot left on my body. How my tennies were damn near worn down to nothing at the end of the summer. How I lost four to six pounds in sweat every trip. Most of all I loved the runner's high. I didn't even know what this was until three years later when I subscribed to Runner's World and began talking to track people and finding out how to really run. The runner's high kept me running long after I dropped the weight. Thinking about it now, it seems to me like reaching the apex of life. After three miles, my body and mind are in perfect sync. The world blurs and I am just an organism functioning at its maximum potential. The buildings and trees and traffic fade. Even the music on my headphones fades. My thoughts fade. I know longer have to barter with my organs in order to make it another hundred yards. I am perfectly being. My feet routinely fall in the same steps on every run. In fact, when it is going well, when I get to certain junctures in the run, I can glance at my watch and know precisely what time it is by my distance and the feeling in my legs. For me it is almost mystical. Like being close to God. Over the last decade, running has become an integral part of my existence. Living in Minnesota makes it damn near impossible to run outside three months out of the year. So I tend to put on 10-15 pounds over my hibernation period. But every spring I am back at it. The funny thing now is my mind remembers the state of bliss that is the runner's high, but my body forgets. Every March I find myself bartering with my heart and lungs as we get near the first mile mark. They always win, though to my mind it seems like we haven't even begun. But in a few weeks, I am up around the four mile length. Like clock work, as soon as my body survives the first mile or two, my body and mind fall into that familiar, divine rhythm and we're off. I only experienced this divine feeling, or "flow" during one other activity: writing. Writing is a struggle to get past the first couple paragraphs. My body has no problem typing for hours on end. It is my mind this time that revolts. With every new paragraph comes the doubt. This is shit. Stop it. What do you think you're doing? Are you really going to leave that sentence that way? Oh, you just ended that sentence with a preposition. Hey, you just mixed up your metaphors dummy. Who is going to want to read this drivel anyway? Just quit and watch TV already. . . But this time it's my body's turn to pay my mind back. My fingers keep hacking away. And just like after the first mile or two, I enter the runner's high; after the first page or two, I enter the writer's high. Soon my mind begins to cease shouting obscenities at the screen. After a two pages it just grumbles somewhere deep down in my consciousness. Eventually, it either gives in to my ego and decides, hey, this isn't so bad after all. Ultimately, my mind and body get lost in the writing. At a certain point I cease to even see the words I'm typing. I am aware of them but the images in my head take over for the words. Then I

am lost in those memories or scenes that I either recall or create. This too is like being in the presence of God. Time and space seem to fade. I often sit down to write with a cup of coffee or tea. When I reach to take my first sip, the drink will be cold. I am amazed to realize I forgot all about it and just wrote for what seemed like ten minutes, but was really an hour. Or I will start typing in the afternoon and then realize I need a book from my car. When I step outside it will be pitch black out. When writing time seems to liquefy and flow by. All that I am conscious of is the story. My mind ceases to question and edit. Intuitively it begins to place the words and punctuation and grammar in the precise form it needs to be. In fact, I have often found myself reading over a rough draft and realizing that there is a flow of voice or images or style that I wasn't even trying to evoke, but came out anyway. I have been writing on and off, mostly off until this year, for 20 years now. My love affair began with hijacking stories or ideas from movies or the books my brother would read and tell me about and putting my own spin on them (see illustration). Then I began to slowly become a little more creative and adventuresome. I branched out into poetry, song lyrics (I would create fictitious names for band members, I myself was Mick Monroe, I would draw the album covers, write the liner notes -- from "Thank Yous" to production credits to the copyright date, and then write down the dates and names of the cities I planned to tour), horror stories (one of which was the pivotal moment of my life (and a topic of another essay) when my ninth grade English teacher had us write a prologue to Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" and I produced a six page prologue, which she read in front of the whole class and said it was the grossest thing she had ever read from a student and that she loved every second of it), thesis/support papers (which, like the Sirens in The Odyssey can lure poor souls/writers to believe their music/form is lovely and then dash their ships and flesh/voices and love for writing to pieces on the rocks before they even knew what happened), to creative nonfiction, from which I tend to most often find myself in the writer's nirvana.