Runner's High — mnchrm vol. lxii
Testing, testing—
///INCOMING TRANSMISSION///
Hello friends. It's been a while. Sorry for the absence. If you haven't got the foggiest, I'm Ian Battaglia, a writer, photographer, and filmmaker, and this is my newsletter. If you'd like to no longer receive these, just click here.
I'd forgotten about this framing, these newsletters as dispatches, transmissions from a strange spacecraft. I missed that; it's fun, and really contains some of the essential essence of what I want to imbue into these messages. Which is to say, snippets, things that caught my eye, things I'm thinking about or working on or doing, sure... but broad-view, a moment in my mind and through my eyes looking out the window as we drift by, condensed and curated into the essentials. More or less. I'm working on it.
I guess the main reason I've been quiet has been that I haven't really known what to say. And when I have, it hasn't really felt right. While these issues are extremely important to me, I know I'm not the right voice for the moment. And I certainly don't want to just go about "business-as-usual" and just pretend everything is normal. It's a hard balance to find. So I've mostly been quiet. I've even been tweeting less! (probably for the best overall...)
But I'm sticking my toes into the water.
I've been running a lot. It's hard. In the past it has sometimes felt like it came easy, like I could just lean forward and start moving, but not lately. I guess I'm especially out of shape—months more sedentary than every in isolation will do that to you. I very rarely feel like I get into a groove lately, find the perfect runner's high, lock my feet into a cadence, and beat on. But I want to get better, and I keep going out there. A little more each day. This is a metaphor and isn't one. I really am going out there and sweating as often as possible, trying to get better.
The same in the big picture. I sort of thought isolation would just come easy. Like yeah, it's weird an uncomfortable, but I would just turn a corner and find a muse and write a novel in a month, or read a book a day. Not so. And I hate to admit that it's taken me until now to realize, it's not going to happen like that. I might never find the runner's high. I'm going to have to put in the work, and keep putting in the work, and maybe after a long time of conscious effort like that, it'll become second nature. But even that is a distant dream. I've got to just put in the miles, first.
Right before all this, I did a sound bath meditation session. It was held in the second-floor gym of a martial arts dojo. Winding the steps up, I noticed the wood. Upon entering the studio, everyone was required to remove their shoes. Everyone who entered, regardless of what it was or where they were going in the building, removed their shoes.
And yet, the steps to the second floor gym, each featured deep indentations from footfalls. Over the years, over time, the steps had been worn away, polished smooth by cotton socks and the weight of bodies pressing down. Uneven, unplanned, and beautiful. That's what I want to bring into my work, into the spaced I inhabit; that sort of passion and diligence. I'm not that good of a runner, but I want to be, and I'm going to keep working at it.
Stay strong, fight on.
From Chicago with love.
Your faithful commander,
— I