I said that, on the contrary, I had come to believe more and more in the virtues of passivity, and of living a life as unmarked by self-will as possible. One could make almost anything happen, if one tried hard enough, but the trying—it seemed to me—was almost always a sign that one was crossing the currents, was forcing events in a direction they did not naturally want to go, and though you might argue that nothing could ever be accomplished without going against nature to some extent, the artificiality of that vision and its consequences had become—to put it bluntly—anathema to me. There was a great difference, I said, between the things I wanted and the things that I could apparently have, and until I had finally and forever made my peace with that fact, I had decided to want nothing at all. – Rachel Cusk, Outline
I ran across a small section of San Francisco this afternoon. I was running because I had dropped off my 1998 Jeep Cherokee at Bismark Autobody & Paint on 15th Street. Since the rain started early this season, my car has had a slight, cold, dampness to it, which I have allowed to go undiagnosed for months. But in this constant deluge, a small puddle formed on the interior floor near the right passenger door, which made the issue impossible to ignore. From 15th Street I ran towards the Haight, considering a loop through the top of Golden Gate Park, my well known territory. But when I passed the corner of Buena Vista park, I diverted, up and over the park steps, to the top of another city hill.
It’s January, and I didn’t expect to be here, perched on the Eastern slope of Twin Peaks. I moved to a hillside Mill Valley studio in October, tucked beneath redwoods and ferns. I believe I wrote the studio into being, lonely one summer evening in Strasbourg. You can think I am right or think I am wrong about that, but I said I would live in a wood paneled studio among the redwoods, and over a year later, the studio came to me. I’ve grown tired of manifestations, but maybe I can say I believe in visions.
My physical body has been feeling tired, resistant to repetition of the long miles I battered it with in the fall. I miss the ease, though, with which I repeatedly climbed up to Cardiac from Muir Woods. I was training to run the Quad Dipsea, a race that traverses the famous trail from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach. There and back; there and back. Nearly 9000 vertical feet, and 28 miles. I can’t quite imagine running it today, but I did run it, a little over a month ago. I had built up my fortitude in the three months prior, running in the Eastern Sierra and the west shore of Lake Tahoe in September, before settling into my Mill Valley training ground in October and November. I built up many mile weeks running on the trails around Mt. Tam, and put my legs up on my green velvet couch in the dim lit fall afternoons. In retrospect, all that running feels effortless, though I know it could not have been.
The last thirteen years of my life have been bound by discreet timelines. Four years of college, working in an organic chemistry lab. A bonus year in Santa Barbara, when I deferred grad school for a start-up job. Five years in Berkeley, earning a PhD. Eight months to live in a cottage in Larkspur, leading up to a cross country move. A summer month running through the Mountain West, on my way to a new home. Two years of a rotational program, moving between cities, and countries.
I believe I self-selected objectives with timelines as a way of controlling my narrative. These objectives allowed me to put my head down, and focus on the day-to-day, since the endpoint was already defined. But my objectives have also blinded me to the non sequiturs in life. I might have switched majors, since my favorite college class wasn’t chemistry, but the small-scale agriculture elective where we planted beans and ate homemade vegan snacks on a garden plot by the stadium. I might have stayed in Santa Barbara, if grad school hadn’t been decided. What could have filled those five years I spent in Berkeley, had I not been bound to one place? And if I had not had a job waiting for me in Raleigh, would I be living in Stanley, or Bozeman, or Telluride?
At the end of August, I finished my rotational program, and left that job. I became unbounded, perhaps for the first time in my life. Objectives that I had attached meaning to became obsolete, so that I began questioning my predisposition to objectives at all. In my redwood studio, I luxuriated in the early morning hours drinking coffee and reading on my porch. I made bowls of oatmeal drizzled in honey and sliced almonds, and batches of soup in my copper pot. I put on my running shoes, morning after morning, as routes took form in my mind. I suppose I self-imposed an objective – racing the Quad Dipsea– and I wanted to run it faster than I had before. The objective added purpose to my miles, and the miles added structure to my days.
When the race day came, it was grey and frigid. I walked to the start line like I imagined I would. I ran my four laps, pushing myself up to Cardiac like I’d practiced, letting gravity pull my legs on every descent. When my mind told me that the steps were getting harder, I told my mind that the steps were getting harder for everyone. I ran minutes faster than I thought I could. It was not effortless, but my effort was practiced; maybe the right way to say it is that the effort came easily.
The result of that effort was a single second recorded on the clock of a late November afternoon. It was a satisfying second. But it did nothing to define the hours of running that came before it; it only made me miss what was encapsulated in the days of the fall.
A few weeks ago, I would have told you that you would still find me in the redwoods come January. I missed the warmth of the city, and the quiet coziness of the studio, which I’d welcomed, began to feel like a retreat I no longer needed. But I felt attached to the narrative I had written for myself. The narrative said I would be living in the wood paneled studio in January; so, shouldn’t I be? When pressed to make a decision though, I felt like I was forcing something that I had no reason to force. Maybe my redwood season had already been exactly what it needed to be.
And so I write this from a leather chair, in a living room overlooking the afternoon sun on this city. A few years ago, this house and its inhabitants weren’t even known to me. But somewhere in the span of months that led up to me leaving California, they became the city warmth that I would return to. From my perch, the Skyline Ridge trail outlines the Berkeley Hills, and the western facing homes in Noe Valley are basking in the late light. The days are getting longer. In a few more weeks, I will walk the warm streets of Puebla and Oaxaca; I want those days, whatever they may hold. Unbounded in time, untethered from objective.
Letters From 