"I couldn't see
anybody, and I knew what the loneliness of the long-distance runner running
across country felt like, realising that as far as I was concerned this feeling
was the only honesty and realness there was in the world … no matter what
anybody else tried to tell me."
― Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
As the day warms, I am lacing up my shoes for a two-hour
run.
In an alternate universe,
a parallel me is starting to write a novel that has a theme of
belonging. In both realities, I am aware that I am the only resident.
A writer is often an outlier, socially speaking; an observer
and documenter rather than a participant. Even authors who excel at the social
aspect of their job (and there is one) will admit that when they are sitting
in front of a half-finished subplot wondering how they are ever going to get
untangled from it, there isn’t much advantage to being a pleasant dinner
companion or a social media maven.
I am a long distance runner who has never experienced
loneliness. Last summer when I was slogging up a mountain in Iceland, up to my
shins in slush with sleet whipping into my face, I didn’t look around for
someone to share the experience with. It was mine – for better or worse – and I
wanted it all to myself.
My memoir, Dr.
Bartolo’s Umbrella, was aimed at a particular target audience and within the
parameters I had set for myself it was more successful than I had ever dreamed it
would be. These were the parameters: I wanted whoever read it to enjoy it.
Word got back to me that many did.
But that is not why I wrote it. I wrote it because I loved
the simple individuality of the process.
To me, the purest joy and greatest challenge was the writing
itself:
to
write clearly but lyrically; to find new ways of saying things that have been
said a million million times; to put thoughts in order logically but
fantastically; to communicate symbolically and be believed viscerally.
To do this, I had to choose critically which advice I would accept
from teachers, editors, and peers, because every word in my book is in held in
place by my imagination and craft, not theirs. My Acknowledgements section is
as a full and as heartfelt as any author’s, but ultimately I was the one who
sat alone at my keyboard for years, conceiving, writing, revising. I do not
write by committee.
(I have yet to experience the traditional author’s nightmare
of having absolutely no one show up to one of my readings. This must be the literary
manifestation of loneliness.)
Nor do I run as part of a team. Unless I decide to join the
local Wednesday Afternoon Walking and Conversation Group – which I am not currently
contemplating – a major characteristic of running for me is that it is a
solitary, non-social activity.
So, if I cherish my solitude so much, why go into an
organized running event at all? That’s a question I’ve asked myself increasingly
in past years. For one thing, I like the challenge of an unfamiliar course planned
and laid out by someone else; these always seem to be a bit less forgiving than
the paths I choose for myself. But lately I’ve left behind races like Ironman and
big-city marathons in favour of low-profile trail races – same great distances and
support with much less noise.
For me, a running event is still an individual process that takes
place in the company of several hundred others who are also locked in private negotiation
with their own limitations and dreams. I am in company, but every step I take
is mine alone.
I have always found purity – a “realness” as Sillitoe writes – in the
fulfillment of a personal goal: in working to prepare for it; in stretching to
achieve it; in doing what I told myself I was going to do. Pushing myself to go
farther today than I did yesterday reminds me of the struggle to align words
and thoughts. When I edit my writing I want the revision to be an improvement
on what was on the page before; occasionally it is. Crossing a finish line is
akin to the feeling of polishing a sentence that finally says exactly what you
want it to – the certitude that there is no more work to be done.
Running and writing: two things that bring me joy.
Two things I do alone.
PS: This will be my penultimate post in Lyricycle. After ten
years, I find that my focus and direction have moved beyond the scope of this
blog. After all, there are only so many ways I can describe moving myself across the
planet under my own power (a phrase I imagine I’ve used about a dozen times in
the last decade). I am developing a new website, and I’ll leave a link to it on
this page when it is operational.
