palace of winds

I have pictures of the haircut, both those I took upon returning home (i.e. the ones that look professionally-styled, since they are) and a few I took a few days later (i.e. the ones that look like normal-people hair). But they’re on my home computer, and I’m lazy, and everyone I’ve talked to in the past week who’s wanted to see them has, so. I’m well-pleased. It’s funny how seven or eight inches can feel like the whole world off your shoulders, if only in brief flashes.

As though obsessive step-aerobicizing wasn’t far enough outside of my character, I’ve decided to take up running. I spent all but $8 of my work birthday money on a pair of running shoes and some running socks. (Evidently it’s bad bad bad to run in natural fibers; it’s all about cool-max, though my affection for these particular socks grows from the way they snug around the arches of my feet rather than their cool-max-ness.) This is my second day of rising at 5:45 for intervals around the neighborhood, and I’ve found it an invigorating way to greet dawn.

I’m also falling prematurely in love with my shoes — they’re Adidas Boston Classics, and they represent the whole big pretty idea of being a runner in my head. They are leanness, fleet-footedness, far-away meditative-ness, self-posession. The two times I’ve gone so far, though, running has actually been about being viscerally embodied. It has been breath made cold and savage from shoulder to navel, the reality of muscle movement. Weight and effort. Later, perhaps, after I have built up my endurance and it is all auto-pilot, my mind will slip loose. For now I am enjoying it as best I can on current terms, discomfort and all.

I need to stay out of the store for a while, I think. I’ve already purchased not one but two hats for running, plus new shirts and shorts and a hoodie, and a watch. I sort of hate the watch, though, so I’ll need to go bargain-hunting again. I just want one with a good clear digital display, and a band small enough that I don’t have six feet left over after I’ve strapped it round my wrist. Especially if those six feet are all the scratchy side of velcro that keeps pulling various bits off my clothing.

Plus I sort of really want a new bike, which I was planning on getting this autumn. That was before the $92 on running shoes, though. But bikes go on sale in the fall, and if I’m near and fit enough next spring I want to start biking into work instead of taking my car.

Que sera. Speculation for another day.