Nigel, There's Something Chasing Me.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

So after work every day, I go to the gym.  The main portion of my workout is an hour on the treatmill, at 4.2 MPH, with half the time at a 5% incline.  It's boring as hell.  It's the same scene everyday, the same people, the same long, boring walk.  The only reason I do it is that there's this huge bottle of insulin behind me, saying that it would be okay if I, you know, took the day off.

Boy, it's a good thing the rest of my life isn't like that, right?

I go to work every day, and it's the same long, boring walk.  The scenery is the same, the people are the same, and even the crisises are becoming routine.  After work, and after the gym, I try to have a social life.  The people are the same.  The town is the same.  Every relationship I get into turns into the same slow-motion train wreck (Not an entirely bad thing, but still).  There's nowhere else to go, because as everyone knows, Tucson is all there is. 

Once you leave Tucson, it's just desert, desert, and more desert.  I have heard rumors of lands where there's loads of water and loads of people, and even other cities, but I was also told about Santa Claus too, right?

It's all the same, it's like walking on that treadmill, with the backdrop endlessly repeating like in a Scooby Doo rerun.  So why do I do it?  Why do I keep moving?  Why, because there's a beast behind me, and if I stop, it will eat me.

It's not just me, either.  When I drive through town, I see other drivers, right?  They all have this rictus on their face that says I'm late, I gotta run, there's no silver medal for second place, there's a huge goddamn monster chasing me, and I can't look back, because it might be gaining.  Good luck stopping to fight it, because that thing is the size of the world, and it will stomp you flat.

What is that monster, Nigel?  Do you also have these creatures in your Only City in the World? 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

more later

[The Johnny]

Only thing i can suggest... instead of threadmill, do bike cardio... from what ive experienced, biking burns more calories (unless you run on the threadmill, but oh i know how much running sucks), and even do bike cardio is boring too, you can achieve the same calories burned in a third of the time.

[Fredfredly ⊂(◉‿◉)つ]

 

also, add music and dance&sing on the treadmill. people look at you funny, but its awesome.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Only thing i can suggest... instead of threadmill, do bike cardio... from what ive experienced, biking burns more calories (unless you run on the threadmill, but oh i know how much running sucks), and even do bike cardio is boring too, you can achieve the same calories burned in a third of the time.

Bollocks.  I've lost 35 pounds and 6" off my waistline on the treadmill. 

TGRR,
Not messing with success.

[Reginald Ret]

I'm imagining TGRR while running on the threadmill:
'All of a sudden he turned around while screaming incoherently and decked the poor sod who happened to be standing closest'

[The Wizard]

Nice. I like it. I get the same feeling sometimes, and I see it in the face of at least one person every day. Kudos man.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I was going to write more, but I was  tense so I ate a cookie and now I'm useless.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I was going to write more, but I was  tense so I ate a cookie and now I'm useless.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

At least I'm not losing my mind because of the wind. I'll write about that, sometime.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

My problem, Roger, is that what's chasing me these days is too close for me to stop and write. I have to work, Roger, I have to be productive, I have to make product and prep product and list product and ship product. I have to go to mediation meetings and lawyer meetings and meet with my mortgage agent and real estate agent and get independent appraisals. I have to list my income and my assets and my liabilities, and I have to drop off my children at school and pick up my children from school, and I have to do it all in between somehow, magically working enough to keep everything from falling apart. I have to keep running, Roger, because it's close on my heels and I can feel it at the back of my neck. I can smell it, and the stench keeps me up at night.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

My problem, Roger, is that what's chasing me these days is too close for me to stop and write. I have to work, Roger, I have to be productive, I have to make product and prep product and list product and ship product. I have to go to mediation meetings and lawyer meetings and meet with my mortgage agent and real estate agent and get independent appraisals. I have to list my income and my assets and my liabilities, and I have to drop off my children at school and pick up my children from school, and I have to do it all in between somehow, magically working enough to keep everything from falling apart. I have to keep running, Roger, because it's close on my heels and I can feel it at the back of my neck. I can smell it, and the stench keeps me up at night.

It's just as well.  If you stop running in your sleep, the damn thing will probably catch you.  Remember what happened to Richard Nixon and Fatty Arbuckle and Curly.  They all decided one day that they were sick of running, and they turned to face the beast.

And they're gone now, aren't they?

Papa Hemmingway would have argued that they did the right thing, the HUMAN thing, instead of the monkey thing.  Turn to face the beast because, while it may destroy you, at least it won't have defeated you.  Poor old Earnest.  He really believed all that nonsense about people not being made for defeat...he wrote several books about it, trying to explain it to us, thinking it would be a better world if we weren't pounded into our round holes. 

But the old man never got his tuna to market, did he?  No, the beast, the shark, ate the whole damn thing, and the old man was destroyed in the end.  And it's awful easy for people to say that we should turn and face it, but those people don't have small children that will also be destroyed.

So we run.  We run and we run and we'll keep on running til our hearts explode, running from that beast.  Or the impression of that beast.  There might not even BE a beast, after all...but can you take that chance?

[BabylonHoruv]

My town is not the same every day, my life is not the same.  Things are always changing.  I can see the beast eating this town.  It's crow town and the crows are feeding on the corpse.  The change isn't fast, but it;s there, slowly things are falling apart.  It's going to take another twenty years for this place to finish dying but it's not going to stop.  It'll die.

At least it isn't always the same though, it's not the same treadmill, no the treadmill is broken and the beast behind us is busily eating us, in slow, meticulous bites.

[.]

The beast is very much real, it eats you out of house and home. You end up living out of your car until the beast comes and takes that, too. But first, it eats away at your sanity making you think that you should be "keeping up the the Joneses." Then this beast comes up and says, "Rent's due, your past due. Your credit card's due, and Oh look! its late too! Well, we'll just tack on another fee for that so we KNOW that you won't be able to pay for your rent." It eventually eats away at everything until you have nothing left but yourself. Then it tries to tell you that yourself ain't worth a shit. Its a vicious cycle that no one escapes from... Those that do fall off the face of the planet, become the invalids you see on the side of the road that you are afraid to even look at because this may be YOU someday if you don't keep the beast fed.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Late fees.

The thing that's chasing me wants me to remember, every minute of every day, that I must not be late. If I'm late I'll be assessed a late fee, my interest rate will go up, and my minimum will increase. If I can't pay the new minimum on time, my loan will go into delinquency and eventually be sold to a collection agency, who will double it. And so on, and so on.

I can't be late. I work for myself, so it's a common misperception that I have all the time in the world... I can sleep in, can't I? Take a day off whenever I want? No boss to drive me, right? Ah, but they don't understand that my boss is the thing that's chasing me; it's hunger, homelessness, sickness, poverty. I've been poor, I've been hungry. When I was eleven years old I laid my bed over the hole in the trailer floor, so that rats couldn't climb in from the crawlspace.

I was hungry because my mother was an alcoholic who never came home, so I learned to hunt and I learned to eat oysters raw, picked from the rocks. By the time I was 13 I had learned how to play Pinochle with lonely old men so they would make me breakfast, how to steal from the  landlord's garden, how to snare and dress a rabbit, and how to pull a knife on a drunk parent to avoid getting in the car with them. I had learned how to lie to the police (No sir, Sheriff, I'm not by myself out here... my ma comes home every night. No sir, I don't know what time she'll be back tonight, she went to the mainland to get winter clothes) and I had learned how to work for money.

It chases me, it has me running scared. I work in the mornings, to keep it at bay. I work in the afternoons, and I work in the evenings, to keep it from breathing too hard on the necks of my children. In case I forget, there are scars on my body to remind me, but the scars on my body are nothing... the real scars can't be seen, not unless you corner me or raise your voice too high or accidentally wave your arm the wrong way when you're talking, excited about something. You might not even see, you might not see how I went for my belt just then, or you might notice a little jump and think you startled me. And you did.

Or you might notice that I never watch the news and that when you start to tell me the latest terrible story about a child being harmed I'll beg you, please, to stop. Because that's chasing me, too. I don't need to hear about it, because I can see it, always, every day inside my head. It's chasing me, and that's why I'm a little overprotective, a little reluctant to let my own children out of my sight, and always a little anxious until they return. I always will be, even when they're grown, because I know too well that being grown doesn't stop anything, anything at all.

And if you think I've told you, I haven't really told you anything at all, have I? Oh, I could go into so much detail. I could tell you about the moon shining on the tops of cedars bending in the wind, and the cold hard white shelf, about my head pressed hard against an unseen edge, and the shivering, the shivering...

Oh, but I remember. I can't be wasting time writing like this, I'll be late. I need to get to work.