Take the wings off my feet before I burn myself on the sun

There are days where running is a form of catharsis, where you invite pain into your life, and you turn it on yourself like a scourge, then you are cleansed and your mind free. Your feet pound the pavements, your lungs scream at you as you push your body through the barriers and try for that quarter mile more, or half a mile, and your muscles try and pull the brakes. It's a brutal form of catharsis, depending on how far you run, how far you run, and how hard you push yourself, vis-à-vis your level of fitness. But it works.

And there's a sort of sweetness to it all too, when you've broken through that invisible barrier that hobbles you halfway through your run, and you've run with the wind singing in your ears even while your struggle to snatch air into your lungs, and then you feel a sort of perverse exultation in your muscles when you let yourself stop, because you feel so awake.

It must be the pain.

I ran the other night, and The Boy ran with me, matching me stride for stride in my head.

Goddamn if despite everything, I didn't miss that sonofabitch.

(Sentimentality makes me cranky, can you tell?)

He called me last night, and I could hear the wind blowing. "It's cold", he wailed. Poor baby. He called to tell me he couldn't call me for the next four days. Lost in the jungles of Thailand. Am really hoping he doesn't accidentally fall off a cliff.

Ever have one of those times where you wish that you could look down all the possibilities of life, like a great unraveling tapestry with multicolored threads, and pick the one whose ending you like best? ("No, I don't think I want to follow the thread that ends up being St George's arse, I want that one, the bit of the dragon, yeah, that one") I'd absolutely love to peer into the parallel universes which unfold their multiworld petals at the major junctures of my life, although sometimes I wonder if that wouldn't mean breaking my heart.

I am getting that familiar feeling I did a year ago, where a curious restlessness begins to unfurl storm-coloured wings in my mind, and the urge to run, as far as I can, as fast as I can, makes me long for colder weather, further-away weather. To shove the barest essentials into a suitcase and bugger off for a month, or more. Forever would be nice too. J.H, when you made that offer, you have no idea how much I wanted to take it up.

I'd like to go back to Spain, to spend the entire day at Parc Guell, to wander through the perverse organic constructs of Gaudi's mind and breathe in cold, clear air, lightly flavored with smoke and freedom, having a picnic of tapas and dinner at Cal Pep. To fall asleep in my tiny apartment and go to Mercat la Boqueria in the morning, and eat the biggest sweetest fresh strawberries in existence. Or to sit at a café in Provence, try not to choke on pastis, smoking a truly foul Gauloise, and watching the world go by. I want to be walking through Times Square and eating a dollar hotdog and trying to figure out the best way to scam student-price tickets for the latest play, savoring an egg cream and a Warm Winter Toffee Camel and the Village Voice, getting piggy at Island Burgers and Shakes, and getting lost on the pretty things they hang on the walls over at the Met. Or maybe sitting on the grass in New Orleans during the legendary annual jazz festival, eating amazing cajun cooking and getting beads left over from last year's Mardi Gras tangled in my hair. Or maybe to be walking through Amsterdam's red-light district, sitting in a bar, laughing at people getting stoned.

Like the song goes, anywhere but here.