Far From Home

            by Anthony Granados

 

There are days when the fog rolls in off the hills so thick that a man can’t see the hand in front of his face. Street lights fade into wavering glimmers and the old evergreens turn pale, like ancient ghosts.

Shiver cold air.

Beads of water cling to spiderwebs, little diamond lattices twinkling in the half-world light.

 

                                                            ***

 

Some nights, the small responsibilities would crush in.

Every teacher gives a couple simple assignments. Bed’s unmade, laundry needs washing. And somebody has to make dinner. The puppy demands love and affection. Parents demand smiles and manners. I really ought to practice fencing. And violin. And Greek. Really ought to be asleep before midnight.

There’s nowhere to start.

Like a man inside a giant castle of sand while the rain pours down outside. The walls everywhere melting away, water creeping in through tiny holes. Punctures in the breached ceiling spread wider and wider. He seizes fistfuls of sand, intending to repair the wounded walls, but stops, letting the grains trickle through his fingers. Where to begin?

Some nights, the only way out is to run away.

 

                                                            ***

 

Leg muscles ache in the chill and I can’t feel the tips of my ears. Roads disappear into the white air fifty feet in any direction, leaving the sensation of running through ethereal emptiness. Disorienting.

For a few blocks, TV screens and porch lights spill onto the road like chunks of melted butter, but then I’m left with a sliver moon and weak stars to show me where my feet hit the road.

 

                                                            ***

 

I had a friend who would hide in bathrooms with a razor to her wrist on the bad days. Wore bracelets and cloth strips on her arms so that people wouldn’t ask. Practically an entire first aid kit in her backpack.

On the bad days I strip down to shorts and run the hills until my legs tremble and the moist air no longer helps my lungs.

 

It’s always been one of the reasons. On some days you feel like tossing your life up on a flip coin. Slice your arm open with a knife. Odds are you’ll be just fine. Then again, maybe not. Run through the hills until you pass out. Same idea, less blood. It’s the craven’s suicide, the way you kill yourself when you don’t have the guts to pull the trigger.

 

                                                            ***

 

I leave behind the quiet homes and dozing cars. Turn onto a snaking road that coils through Tilden and I shiver as droplets fall from the branches onto my bare chest. Weather makes the pines fade into nothing out beyond the road, impossible to tell how far the forest goes.

I’m thinking of how much more complicated each year seems to get. Thinking of how much easier, how much simpler last year was, or the year before. How much simpler I was. Lost sight of who I used to be somewhere in the twisting net of expectations I’ve tried to live up to. Uneasy feeling that if my sixth grade self saw me now, he would shake his head.

 

                                                            ***

 

I remember the first time I ran.

13 years old. Distraught over a girl. Typical. Ran for over an hour through the small town roads of Kensington talking aloud. Sometimes nonsense, sometimes just speaking what I thought. Pouring my problems out in frosty breaths, braiding tattered threads of thought into a cord.

Night running always creates a sort of clarity. Slices through the unnecessary like cold steel, exertion precluding any distractions. Pure, clear, logical thought. I ran when my parents divorced, I ran when continuing crew was still a question, when I moved out on my own, when I knew I’d fallen in love.

 

Alexander the Great once heard of a knot in Gordion that it was claimed no man could unravel. He marched his army there and cut the knot in half with his sword.

 

                                                            ***

 

Silence broken only by the sounds of falling water and my shoes tapping out a soft midnight tune. The road a black river of endless asphalt. Calls to mind the last lines of a poem by Jaqueline Carey:

            “But here a rain falls never-ending

            And I am far from home.”

I roll the words through my head a few times, savoring their lament.

 

Have the strange feeling of running through another world, as though I were in a dream, waking life a vague memory. As though this road went on forever, and nothing from the world I’d left behind could reach me. I feel immortal.

 

                                                            ***

 

It wasn’t even a choice on the nights I fought with my brother. Absolute need to run through the icy wind that crashed over the hills and cut itself up among the pine needles. A savage fury would slam down my legs and burn the anger out of me, leaving behind a cool, trembling weariness, like when an oil fire blazes across the ocean, and the calm water is all that remains afterwards.

Those were the times I ran blind, when I would fall asleep not knowing where I had run, or for how long. Or how I had ever made it back.

One of the few questions that truly scared me.

What would happen when running wasn’t enough.

 

                                                            ***

 

Mountain lion arches up onto the road, silent landing. We both stand still. Its golden fur is shaded sable under the crescent moon. Eyes like liquid pools of black mercury stare straight into mine. A single instant of total rapport passes.

I am prey.

Immense feeling of belonging, of immersion in nature, separation from every wall and door and tower built by man. I’m not thinking about running or fighting or dying. I’m not thinking about screaming or crying. I’m not seeing my life flash before my eyes.

I am prey.

Paralyzed, mind and body overwhelmed, trying to encompass the reality of a mountain lion ten feet away. A small part of me wants it to make sense, wants to force it into having consequences and meaning. Fails.

 

                                                            ***

 

Nights when the house was empty. Cell phone off and my computer sleeping on a desk in a room with no lights on. Lying on my bed, I used to listen to the cars sweep past on the streets outside. The girl next door fighting with her father. I wasn’t alone. Even though no one would call, even though no one ever knocked on the front door, the throbbing life of a city outside my window kept me company. I was entirely connected, always, even at the times when I sought isolation and solitude.

Only way out, only way to unplug, was to run. Bring nothing, plan no destination. Just run.

 

                                                            ***

 

Maybe five seconds pass. The mountain lion turns and disappears into the leaves. Roky tendrils chase after.

I stand there for a long time while the world around me pulls into sharp focus. Every drop of water trembling on a leaf-tip, every vein of vibrant green, every earthen hued strip of bark. Gnarled roots like ancient knuckles twining down into the soil. The asphalt shimmers with a dull, oily wetness and blue-white mist wanders in long fingers through the trees. I think of the forest running a hand through its hair.

 

Quivering at the verge of subdued panic. I need to be home, safe. I need to move, to run the shivering cold out of my limbs. Too long standing here.

 

I sprint. Overpowering sense of being chased, imagination summoning up some phantom terror behind me to match my flight. Fear stops me from looking over my shoulder and drives my feet down with darting slivers of pain. More than once I stumble and fall.

Fling the door closed behind me half an hour later and I collapse onto the floor, trembling as the adrenaline leaves my body. Never again.