I’m walking (and riding) a lot more these days because, after years of running, I’ve been having trouble breathing. It all started last winter when I caught a cold and flu that turned into walking pneumonia. It’s much better now, but vestiges just seem to hang on. I’ve chocked it up to getting old and tried to work around it.
Besides, walking is so much more pleasant than grinding out a run.
As for exercise entertainment--next to Bob Edwards’ Weekend--Ira Glass’s This American Life is my favorite companion. I find good talk wards off pain and boredom better than music, even good music. This particular edition of TAL is called “The Book That Changed Your Life,” and it is just hilarious. The first segment, from playwright and screenwriter Alexa Junge (Sex in the City, West Wing, Big Love), tells about falling in love with playwright Moss Hart (husband of Kitty Carlisle, author of You Can’t Take It with You & My Fair Lady, and dead before Alexa was born) through his autobiography, and fashioning her early life after his. It’s a hoot, especially when Alexa meets poor Kitty.
The second segment has 13-year-old David Sedaris finding a pornographic novel in the woods. It would change his life, briefly and not for the better, and had me laughing out loud.
What I Talk About. . . can be read in an evening but is, in the vein of This American Life, a book that could very well change your life. Essentially an essay about running—which Murakami has done lots of for more than a generation—and writing, effort and loss and success and coping, it is the kind of book that, as my brother wrote, you will finish reading and then want to re-read to discover all the things you missed.
So, there I was, walking along a quiet country road, listing to Ira Glass, thinking about Murakami.
One runner told of a mantra his older brother, also a runner, had taught him which he’s pondered ever since he began running. Here it is: Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you start to think, Man this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The hurt part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand any more is up to the runner himself. This pretty much sums up the most important aspect of marathon running.
And there I was, walking. Walking fast, but walking. Thinking about Murakami.
Sometimes I run fast when I feel like it, but if I increase the pace I shorten the amount of time I run, the point being to let the exhilaration I feel at the end of each run carry over to the next day. This is the same sort of tack I find necessary when writing a novel. I stop every day right at the point where I feel I can write more. Do that, and the next day’s work goes surprisingly smoothly. I think Ernest Hemingway did something like that. To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm.
Now I’m walking even faster. Don’t want to be a baby, after all. (One of the guys at work saw me out walking the other week and advised me, “Don’t hurt yourself.” Ouch.)
It doesn’t matter what field you’re talking about—beating somebody else just doesn’t do it for me. I’m much more interested in whether I reach the goals that I set for myself. . .In this sense, writing novels and running full marathons are very much alike. Basically a writer has a quiet, inner motivation, and doesn’t seek validation in the outwardly visible.
It is now 40 minutes into my walk. I’m laughing at David Sedaris, thinking about Haruki Marakami. Thinking about what would happen if I run home.
When I’m criticized unjustly (from my viewpoint, at least), or when someone I’m sure will understand me doesn’t, I go running for a little longer than usual. By running longer it’s like I can physically exhaust that portion of my discontent. It also makes me realize again how weak I am, how limited my abilities are. I become aware, physically, of these low points. And one of the results of running a little farther than usual is that I become that much stronger.
Now I’ve stopped. It’s a cul-de-sac of quiet homes, and it’s still too early on a long weekend for sensible people to be awake. What the heck. Maybe I will run home. Breathing is overrated.
I think this viewpoint applies as well to the job of the novelist. Writers who are blessed with inborn talent can freely write novels no matter what they do—or don’t do. Like water from a natural spring, the sentences just well up, and with little or no effort these writers can complete a work. Occasionally you’ll find someone like that, but, unfortunately, that category wouldn’t include me. I haven’t spotted any springs nearby. I have to pound the rock with a chisel and dig out a deep hole before I can locate the source of creativity. To write a novel I have to drive myself hard physically and use a lot of time and effort. Every time I begin a new novel, I have to dredge out another new, deep hole. But as I’ve sustained this kind of life over many years, I’ve become quite efficient, both technically and physically, at opening a hole in the hard rock and locating a new water vein. So as soon as I notice one water source drying up, I can move on right away to another. If people who rely on a natural spring of talent suddenly find they’ve exhausted their only source, they’re in trouble.
20 minutes later—home. Some of the old running kicked in. Not so fast, but not so bad. Maybe I’m still healing.
No matter how much long-distance running might suit me, of course there are days when I feel kind of lethargic and don’t want to run. Actually, it happens a lot. On days like that, I try to think of all kinds of plausible excuses to slough it off. Once, I interviewed the Olympic runner Toshihiko Seko, just after he retired from running and became manager of the S&B company team. I asked him, “Does a runner at your level ever feel like you’d rather not run today, like you don’t want to run and would rather just sleep in?” He stared at me and then, in a voice that made it abundantly clear how stupid he thought the question was, replied, “Of course. All the time!” Now that I look back on it I can see what a dumb question that was. I guess even back then I knew how dumb it was, but I suppose I wanted to hear the answer directly from someone of Seko’s caliber.
The truth is, I don’t know if this book by Haruki Marakumi will change my life. I only know that it changed my Saturday morning.
0 Response to "Running with Haruki Murakami on Columbus Day Weekend"
Post a Comment