This
Journal

October
1999

So it's just about the best day in mid-October. Fresh air, not too chilly or too warm, color in the trees, blue sky, the whole package. I'm headed out for a jog. Haven't done this in about two weeks (this can't be true). But, dammit, there's another stupid grade school football game going on over at my track. I really want that track today. I could run the neighborhood as before, but the street is too uncertain and tough on my joints. I decide to try out the soccer fields, haven't been down there yet. I soon discover that the bumps and dips are going to be no easier on my knees and ankles than the pavement was. But at least it's grass. And the pain in my back is no worse when I run.

At first I run five laps around the two fields, then I cut back to five around one field, the smoothest, the most level one. Three little kids are hanging out by the far goal. They blow an obnoxious whistle every time I pass. One kid has the kind of platinum blond hair you only get from nature before the age of ten. A dark haired kid - a girl I think, taller and heavier than the blond - has the whistle now. I ignore them to attend to the thump in my knee as each foot falls. I'm going to be sore.

Eventually the kids drift away to their homes backed up against the field. Behind me I hear one of them let out a huge ripping howl of a cry "I fell down!" Then a parent's more distant, not-so-concerned, "She fell down."

I'm amazed at the freedom of the child's cry, full of tears and outrage that such a thing could happen. She hasn't learned yet. How long has it been since I've cried out so purely? What confers such freedom on kids where, under similar circumstances, adults must constrain themselves or risk odd looks from passersby? I suppose it's the natural vulnerability of kids that we take for granted, but we expect adults to have their defenses up. Above all, we expect adults to absorb life's bumps in silence. We've all got our own troubles, fella.

That kid finds no obstacle to tearful public howling; the surprising fall and a little pain are a barrier up against which she will cry out. When we run into these things, they stop us or they don't. As adults we just take it or we don't. In either case, we don't make a scene. Making a scene is the prerogative of children and crazy people. They lack some impulse control. They haven't learned or have willfully, pathologically forgotten.

Stuff gets in our way all the time. How do we respond? Our days are made of this.

There are barriers to perception. You think you see a middle-aged guy slogging around the soccer field, but it's really me, reading and writing the experience. If you stopped me as I ran and asked what I was doing, I'd say "I'm writing something." There's no way you could know; I don't blame you. I won't make a scene. But maybe you should not have assumed.

People say I'm hard to know. I never understand that. What's so different about me? What's my game? What game are you playing that I just don't get? Am I too quiet? Too intellectual? Does that bother you? Do I have too many books? Should I watch more television? Care more about the BearsBullsSoxCubsHawks? Talk more? Why haven't these questions of identity been settled long ago? I think I'm no harder to know than you are.

What do you mean when you say you know someone? Has someone you claim to know ever surprised you in pleasant or unpleasant ways? This happens to me all the time.

I don't understand any of you. You are all so strange - plain weird sometimes. My mystery is not more or less profound than yours. There's nothing awesome in here that isn't awesome in there.

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.
Helen Keller