She clutched the train ticket tighter and waited for the sense of escape to come over her as it had a dozen times before, that heady sensation of having just scooted through the clanging gate, of eluding the thrown net. It didn't come. She was running again, but she wasn't escaping. She'd been chased to ground a long, long time ago.
Of course, we all go through our own experiences. If we do not push ourselves enough, we do not grow, but if we push ourselves too much, we regress. What is enough will change, depending on where we are and what we are doing. In that sense, the present moment is always some kind of beginning.
The mountain trees that grew between the pines were a brilliant blaze of fall colors, like fire against the emerald green of the pines, firs and pruces. And it was, as I'd told myself long ago, the year's last passionate love affair before it grew old and died from the frosty bite of winter.
Mr. Schlubb, the pear-shaped PE teacher, sent us all out to run half a dozen laps around a preposterously enormous cinder track. For the Greenwood kids - all of us white, marshmallowy, innately unphysical, squinting unfamiliarly in the bright sunshine - it was a shock to the system of an unprecedented order.
After joyfully working each morning, I would leave off around midday to challenge myself to a footrace. Speeding along the sunny paths of the Jardin du Luxembourg, ideas would breed like aphids in my head - for creative invention is easy and sublime when air cycles quickly through the lungs and the body is busy at noble tasks.
I know a girl from whose body sunbeams rose to the clouds as if they’d fallen from the sun.
Her laugh was like a bangle of bells.
“Your hair is wet,” I told her one day, “Did you take a bath?”
“It is dew!” she laughed, “I’ve been lying in the grass. All morning long, I lay here waiting for the dawn.
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