Differentiating time

Windsor Castle, Moat Garden, March 2018, photo by Gwilym Eades

Here is the notebook entry alluded to in the last post:

From my notebook, the day my father died, written just after a run, but before I got the news:

"When we de-prioritise time, it unfolds differently.  Differently from when it is prioritised, but also differently in the sense of in-difference, and productive of difference.  

Does it just mean running slower? (To some extent, but not necessarily, yes)."

Then, on March 20th, 2018, ten days after I received the news of my father's death:

"Dialectics are concerned with time, which is of the body; and with space, or extension outside the body.  Body and mind are one, both are extended through time and space, and in relation to other bodies.  

Now think about a route.  We tend to see it as a fixed thing, but it is always changing.  There are miniscule, incremental changes in a material sense: a new curb or re-surfaced road section, some trees removed.  Others are more catastrophic: that roundabout gets taken out by construction or flooding for a few months or weeks causing a full-scale shift in the route.  And conditions change daily: the weather especially can alter our sense of the shape and length of a route, especially on very hot or cold days.  These are the external movements of space we deal with daily, and in the longer term as well.

Time is of the body: it has a rhythm, it dilates, extends, and shrinks.  Most of all we tend to think of it as a line, an object outside, on our wrist, on Strava, Garmin, or Suunto.

'While you are sleeping your body heals.'  My wife just told me this and she's right.  I'm training for my first marathon, tweaking my runs, my diet, my recoveries.  But after one particular (10k trail) run, and the whole next day, I felt sore and tired.  It focused in my right leg from the knee up.  Two days later I got a good night's sleep and it started to clear up and that is when I made the connection: I wasn't getting enough sleep.  It is now time to do so, consistently, so the body has time to heal.  I've decided to gift my body this time.  It/myself.

This is the other side of the dialectic: the ideal one, the thinking side, the one that psyches you up (or out).

The observation about differences in time was made 10 days ago after a long (30k) run where I'd adjusted my pace to endure its length by slowing down to 11 min/mile.  This was my psyching up procedure to outsmart time by slowing it down.  The result: farther in space, and more ground covered in relative comfort.  The difference this made was that it gave me space to think, to breathe differently, to let others overtake as I moderated my pace and really took in the scenery.  At Windsor Castle gate I took a few seconds' break (11km in) to take my first sip of home-made Gatorade: 3/4 water & 1/4 o.j. with a good dash of salt.  That moment to throw my gaze down the Long Walk, to where the moving mist washed across the Copper Horse: that would be my half-way point.

The Long Walk from Windsor Castle, 2013, photo by Gwilym Eades

So in the indifference to time, in the determination to let it take what it takes, you give yourself over to your body -- you listen to it -- and it comes to embody the differences in space produced by that giving.  You are no longer indifferent in this new sense: there is a thrill in seeing things go by, phenomenally.  Blue-panelled escarpments rise and slide by in jagged layers, echoing and fading across the valley.  You turn your head and a field seems bright despite the greyness of the day -- even the mud shines -- you are lucky there is no pain, because one day you may be running through it.

That same day, ten days ago, I received news that my father had died.  As I always do on run days I took a short nap, but I rarely dream.  Today, exceptionally, I was in my bedroom (usually I'm on the couch), and I dreamed, of the birds flapping in the field next to the Long Walk near the Copper Horse.  The dream was vivid and short, the birds all sorts: geese, crows, and kites, some flapping on the ground, some taking flight."

I've since begun to recuperate my leg and have identified a second problem.  After running hard for two years I have 'no more ass', i.e. less cushion than I used to, and sitting on an office chair is painful.  It causes pain from my hip to my knee.  I now work standing or stretched out across two soft chairs.  My stretching and rolling regime has also been extended.  I'm on the mend!