What I Think About When He Talks About Running

Run by ll_browneyes_ll

I was cruising down the escalator (shouldn’t this be called descender?) from the train platform when I told this photographer guy from work about the little book I was almost finished with and still holding on the way to the other station line. I didn’t know, I began my monologue, that this writer I’ve been reading ran a marathon almost every year since he was 33. That’s also about the same time he started to take writing seriously as his profession. He just ran, I continued, and he’s still doing it until now, what is he, like 60. Grabe, no? And I thought, yeah, that’s a lot. But since then, he’s also published book after book of stories and novels one after the other. No gap that will leave a runner behind his target time. It’s apparent of, course–what he’s saying–that writing’s a lot like running. Only it’s too lazy to jump onto such a cute catchphrase. It’s better to run through (hah!) his trainings and marathons. Which reminded me how many times I’ve attempted to run regularly, no writing metaphor intended, and failed. But I understand him when talks about pace, about the music he listened to on the go, how it’s a loner’s sport, how there’s usually nothing so extraordinary to inspire writing, that it’s usually just running on and on.

Sheep with a Star on Its Back

This is a secret. I just finished Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase last Thursday night while waiting for a music festival to begin outside a bar in Katipunan. Jap kids arrived in a pack when I was pacing through the last pages, and I was secretly looking at their ears. Do you get anything while she’s wiping hers?

Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like if I knew more languages and I’m a translator instead, or what if I’m in advertising. I love looking at ads, but I’m afraid of the marks  I could be making. What if I’m asked to find a sheep with a star on its back? I’m not sure I dig that.

It’s strange how there’s no time in mountains, no? No distance too. You say after dinner or when the fog settles or past the sheep pasture. Even watches are useless. You just have to do what you can.

There’s this one sad thing I’ve been thinking about: what if you find what you want too early; how do you spend the rest of your life? Somewhere, there’s this place called the Dolphin Hotel where an old sheep professor locks himself in. He found what he was looking for, but it left.

Sometimes, it is too late when we find it. And we realize, somehow, there was a guide. Only we were not ready to understand. Once, there was a Rat and a sheep with a star on its back who lived far out in the mountains where there is no time.

Talking Cats at Rizal Shrine

Last Saturday, my friend Vins invited me to accompany her and her high school students at Assumption-Antipolo to Intramuros. I was expecting myself to bring home shots of historical buildings and objects, but look what I found at the back of Rizal Shrine.

There were so many of them hanging out in this patch of sunlight, and you know how they have that knowing gaze. It looked surreal—as if ripped off from a scene in Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. Which one looks like Mimi, Goma, Kawamura, Okawa, or Toro?