Written following T’s expression of excitement when walking back along the down-sloping path from the cafe where we had lunch on the balcony.
Hey, T.
Or is it E?
I can’t tell—it’s all mixed up.
I look around.
The world’s changed.
I realize I’m lost—or at least that’s how it feels.
I’m somewhere else.
And running.
Yes, running.
In fields.
Fields!
In a strange country.
And I don’t know where I’m running to?
But I am running to, not from, though I don’t know where that to is taking me.
There’re no roads here.
No signposts.
No leftover, battered milestones.
No one holding out their arm and stretching a pointing finger from their hand.
And I can’t stop running.
I just can’t stop running!
It’s like a fever, a strange, dancing, frantic fever.
It’s overtaken me.
It’s taken control of my feet.
They’re prancing.
They’re racing.
I can’t stop them.
And each prancing, racing, dancing stride drives me onto the next wild step, the next reel, the next uncontrollable leap.
Yes, I’m lost to it—I’m consumed by it.
And, yes, leap!
So here I am, jumping over dykes, and rivers, and hills, and trees.
In a single bound I’m on the other side of massive cliffs, and lakes, and deserts, and mountains.
I’m almost flying.
I’m so confused.
And it’s building up inside me—a strange pressure.
I need to release it.
I need to cry out—with joy, with exhilaration, with the frantic leaping of it all.
I look down.
But where’s the ground now?
Where’s the firmness of the earth?
I’m running in space.
I’m dizzy.
Then, suddenly, in a spinning, giddy moment, I descend.
But, when I press my feet against what I hope is earth—just for that one moment when I need to purchase against it, to use its stability before the next fevered leap—then, when my feet just touch that surface, and I hope my movements will settle, that I will feel the solidness of the ground, there’s no sense of firmness.
Yes, even the ground of this new country doesn’t hold to laws of nature: it’s not firm, there’s no gravity, it’s strangely liquid—all of it flows.
Then, like steam, it rises in clouds around me and mixes with the air.
Yes, even though I know I touch it when I need another thrust to carry me over the next lake, or mountain range, or sea, the ground itself feels as fluid and new, and forming, and coming about as the air above it.
Ah, of course, I see—I realise.
This world—this new world—is breathing its first.
It’s just been born.
I can hear it inhaling.
And I’m inside its breath.
Of course—this is its birth.
And I can feel it’s striving to live.
It’s as if everything is being created beneath my feet, lifting me on its novelty, bearing me up with its so new newness, securing me in a fresh and newborn place—a place of future, a place of hope, a place of becoming.
I can’t stop.
I won’t stop.
Even if I could, I won’t stop.
No, not now.
I only want to be carried on and on.
I only want to be borne up by the twisting, spiralling newness that swirls around me—swirls within me.
Wherever I am, T, I am in it and it’s in me.
Whoever I am, E, I am in you and you are in me.
There’s no signpost, no known ground, no gravity.
They’re not needed.
We’re emerging.
Can you feel it, T?
We’re running to.
Can you sense it, E?
We’re running to.
