Rejuvenate

I have been down the past week, sick some, worn down some from work, and haunted some by things not done and the chores that remain on the balance sheet.

This morning I reached for the New Yorker, too tired to hope. I liked the calming print on an article. A solitary runner with purple hills in the background, creeping greenery on the side and orange shoes in their stride. I started reading it and something about the writing tickled me. My nostrils felt it first. Like a man perking up to the fragrance of coffee in the morning, the rest of my senses followed. My eyes opened. I nudged my body to a more comfortable position on the low couch, and finished reading. Life and Letters, by Haruki Murakami. In this wonderful article, the writer discovers that he is a novelist. And I who long ago identified him to be the novelist, discovered he was a long distance runner.

With a few simple sentences, the author stirs up memories some, offers advice some, and slips in words into my psyche some as I start on the weekend:

At any rate, this is how I started running. Thirty-three---that's how old I was then. Still young enough, though no longer a young man. The age that Jesus Christ died. The age that F. Scott Fitzgerald started to go downhill. It's an age that may be a kind of crossroads in life. It was the age when I began my life as a runner, ...