LJ Idol Week 11: Wild Goose Chase
Ariadne has been tired all day, but something always wakes up in her as she settles into her evening run. This morning when she got up, her feet and ankles were still sore from her longer run a few days ago, but now it feels like her body’s warming up to this. Her steps don’t hurt, though her side is aching a little. She straightens her torso and tries to think of circles with her feet, and of keeping the cadence even.
The air is cool and damp on her skin. The sky is almost completely dark. Her son has another hour of Ju-Jitsu practice. She already started cooking a dinner that will be easy to complete when they get home. This time is hers.
The damp air over the city smells like it is in from the coast. It smells of salt overlaid with dense swampy organics. She imagines how it would feel to run the 25 or so miles to the coast. Not tonight. Maybe she won’t ever be that strong again.
Ahead is the massive retention pond the city created when it redid this road with the multi-use trail beside it. By day it’s a great place to spot birds nestled among the tall buildings downtown. At night it’s psychedelically lit with bright rainbow color changing LEDs all along the retaining walls. Urban art. Also something to prevent homeless from camping there when bits of the pond are dry. Something to prevent bodies from mysteriously turning up there.
It’s a dark thought. This isn’t a particularly dangerous part of town, though she has coworkers that would chide her for running there alone after dark. There are likely cameras in the area. But there are also a string of emergency call beacons- bright blue steel columns under bright lights with buttons and speakers that will call the police. There are also usually some young people, some scruffy, just hanging around. Maybe with loud music or smoking things with various scents.
Ariadne wonders when she started thinking of the urban loiterers as young people. At 41 she feels comfortably old jogging along in the evening air, but she felt uncomfortably old at her office earlier in the day, struggling to be heard. It’s certainly not what she’d thought it would be; this stage of life.
Was it this much of a grind for her parents?
She thinks of her son, tall for his age and practicing martial arts now with a mostly-older group of kids. Occasionally he’ll run with her. She remembers once when he was very small. She had just taken up running and was doing a few laps around the block her house was on, sticking to the schedule dictated by an Ap on her phone, trying to get stronger. As she came by the driveway her husband brought him out and he broke into the biggest smile when he saw her running. “Chase me, mommy, chase me!” he shouted, running back toward the house. She still had a few minutes more of running on the schedule, so she shouted "Hey!" and ran on by to his dismay. “Mommy,” he shouted looking puzzled, “Who are you chasing?”
“Great job, runner!” exclaims a bright feminine voice from her hip pocket, “Keep it up!” It startles her out of her reverie. She can’t help looking around embarrassed. This is why everyone uses earbuds. She has trouble keeping track of earbuds, though. The trail is pretty deserted, so she smiles. The tyranny of the running Ap continues through to today, eight years or so after her memory. Somewhere in the cloud there’s a robust dataset of her cardio endeavors weather anybody cares or not. She hasn’t been really strong; half-marathon or fast 5k strong, for a long time now. But she also hasn’t completely let things go. She smiles a bit thinking about the question of who she’s chasing, still. She’s chasing a future where she needs to be fit enough, whole enough, to keep experiencing the joy of motion rather than pain. There are trails to be walked and bays to be swum.
But running here so close to home makes her think of more mundane adventure, and of seeking magic and art in everyday life. There are people who would say the city’s project in creating this trail was a boondoggle. To be sure, it benefited some property owners more than others. But it is beautiful. The native plantings along the multi-use trail and the strange shapes of the shades on the pedestrian bridge over the highway that runs past the capital come together to make modern art. The lighting, bright blue interspersed with warm yellow, soothes the senses.
She watches her shadow bouncing along between pools of yellow light, becoming fuzzy and indistinct as she moves toward shadow and then forming up again in the pools of yellow. The head and shoulders are the hardest to make out. Maybe it’s her hair somehow, but her shadow looks almost like it has wings budding up out of her shoulder blades. Urban fantasy, then. That’s something she can get behind. But she’s been so blue lately, and her favorite local author’s been writing a gritty future that everyone describes as eco-horror. It’s quite believable, too.
She realizes that she’s crossed the bridge now, and is nearing the high point of the trail. She’s going to finish her workout in good style. She just needs to work on her mindset about the rest of life. There’s room to believe in urban fantasy somewhere between Jeff Vandermeer and Charles DeLint, perhaps. Artists and bikers coming together to face the eco-horror? It could happen. Maybe there’s even room to create something like that. She just needs to think of a good hook. Here in the ever-moving capital it shouldn’t be hard.
Just as she crests the high point, a loud tone chimes at her side. “Slow down and walk now!” commands her Ap. She sighs and tries to keep her walking steps light with a good cadence and her breathing even.
“Aw, you better keep running,” intones a deep voice from the shadows ahead.
A youngish looking man in an unseasonably heavy jacket and dark sunglasses melts into the pool of light ahead of her where the trail joins other trails surrounding the park. He reminds her of no one so much as a young Samuel L. Jackson. There are plenty of other people around this part of the trail enjoying the park’s amenities, so she’s inclined to pinch herself as she realizes that rising above his shoulders, through his shirt and coat, it appears that this fellow, who’s looking right at her, sports a pair of slightly iridescent brown bat wings.
He smiles and continues, “Ariadne, you never know who you might catch running out here.”
The air is cool and damp on her skin. The sky is almost completely dark. Her son has another hour of Ju-Jitsu practice. She already started cooking a dinner that will be easy to complete when they get home. This time is hers.
The damp air over the city smells like it is in from the coast. It smells of salt overlaid with dense swampy organics. She imagines how it would feel to run the 25 or so miles to the coast. Not tonight. Maybe she won’t ever be that strong again.
Ahead is the massive retention pond the city created when it redid this road with the multi-use trail beside it. By day it’s a great place to spot birds nestled among the tall buildings downtown. At night it’s psychedelically lit with bright rainbow color changing LEDs all along the retaining walls. Urban art. Also something to prevent homeless from camping there when bits of the pond are dry. Something to prevent bodies from mysteriously turning up there.
It’s a dark thought. This isn’t a particularly dangerous part of town, though she has coworkers that would chide her for running there alone after dark. There are likely cameras in the area. But there are also a string of emergency call beacons- bright blue steel columns under bright lights with buttons and speakers that will call the police. There are also usually some young people, some scruffy, just hanging around. Maybe with loud music or smoking things with various scents.
Ariadne wonders when she started thinking of the urban loiterers as young people. At 41 she feels comfortably old jogging along in the evening air, but she felt uncomfortably old at her office earlier in the day, struggling to be heard. It’s certainly not what she’d thought it would be; this stage of life.
Was it this much of a grind for her parents?
She thinks of her son, tall for his age and practicing martial arts now with a mostly-older group of kids. Occasionally he’ll run with her. She remembers once when he was very small. She had just taken up running and was doing a few laps around the block her house was on, sticking to the schedule dictated by an Ap on her phone, trying to get stronger. As she came by the driveway her husband brought him out and he broke into the biggest smile when he saw her running. “Chase me, mommy, chase me!” he shouted, running back toward the house. She still had a few minutes more of running on the schedule, so she shouted "Hey!" and ran on by to his dismay. “Mommy,” he shouted looking puzzled, “Who are you chasing?”
“Great job, runner!” exclaims a bright feminine voice from her hip pocket, “Keep it up!” It startles her out of her reverie. She can’t help looking around embarrassed. This is why everyone uses earbuds. She has trouble keeping track of earbuds, though. The trail is pretty deserted, so she smiles. The tyranny of the running Ap continues through to today, eight years or so after her memory. Somewhere in the cloud there’s a robust dataset of her cardio endeavors weather anybody cares or not. She hasn’t been really strong; half-marathon or fast 5k strong, for a long time now. But she also hasn’t completely let things go. She smiles a bit thinking about the question of who she’s chasing, still. She’s chasing a future where she needs to be fit enough, whole enough, to keep experiencing the joy of motion rather than pain. There are trails to be walked and bays to be swum.
But running here so close to home makes her think of more mundane adventure, and of seeking magic and art in everyday life. There are people who would say the city’s project in creating this trail was a boondoggle. To be sure, it benefited some property owners more than others. But it is beautiful. The native plantings along the multi-use trail and the strange shapes of the shades on the pedestrian bridge over the highway that runs past the capital come together to make modern art. The lighting, bright blue interspersed with warm yellow, soothes the senses.
She watches her shadow bouncing along between pools of yellow light, becoming fuzzy and indistinct as she moves toward shadow and then forming up again in the pools of yellow. The head and shoulders are the hardest to make out. Maybe it’s her hair somehow, but her shadow looks almost like it has wings budding up out of her shoulder blades. Urban fantasy, then. That’s something she can get behind. But she’s been so blue lately, and her favorite local author’s been writing a gritty future that everyone describes as eco-horror. It’s quite believable, too.
She realizes that she’s crossed the bridge now, and is nearing the high point of the trail. She’s going to finish her workout in good style. She just needs to work on her mindset about the rest of life. There’s room to believe in urban fantasy somewhere between Jeff Vandermeer and Charles DeLint, perhaps. Artists and bikers coming together to face the eco-horror? It could happen. Maybe there’s even room to create something like that. She just needs to think of a good hook. Here in the ever-moving capital it shouldn’t be hard.
Just as she crests the high point, a loud tone chimes at her side. “Slow down and walk now!” commands her Ap. She sighs and tries to keep her walking steps light with a good cadence and her breathing even.
“Aw, you better keep running,” intones a deep voice from the shadows ahead.
A youngish looking man in an unseasonably heavy jacket and dark sunglasses melts into the pool of light ahead of her where the trail joins other trails surrounding the park. He reminds her of no one so much as a young Samuel L. Jackson. There are plenty of other people around this part of the trail enjoying the park’s amenities, so she’s inclined to pinch herself as she realizes that rising above his shoulders, through his shirt and coat, it appears that this fellow, who’s looking right at her, sports a pair of slightly iridescent brown bat wings.
He smiles and continues, “Ariadne, you never know who you might catch running out here.”