My reasons for running are uncertain even to myself. I just know that it gives me a certain feeling that is freeing and for a moment, i feel as though I can connect with the skies.
I run in the disappearing pink light of twilight, just as the neighbor’s dinner tables are being set and curtains drawn for the night. I run in the morning before the sun rises, when the moon, in whatever state she’s attending, follows me up and down the hills to keep me company. My company is only the skittering rabbit along the road, the watchful eyes of what I think is a racoon from behind the juniper bushes and my constant companion, Orion, who watches me from the winter skies and leaves me lonely in the summertime.
I run to improve myself. I run to beat the clicking and barely audible sigh of life getting older with me in it. I run to chase away the gnawing and piercing pain from that summer spider bite that sometimes still lingers. I run to clear my mind to a blissful zen-like place where all I feel is peace and pure joy. And I run for inspiration.
Ideas come to me that evade me when I have on my thinking cap inside. Beautiful progressions of projects and visions of brazen artwork come together in my mind. I laugh and wonder how I could have missed such an obvious/clear/brilliant idea until that moment, feet flying down the hill, chasing the moonrise or spooking that tree down there with a dozen vultures roosting…
I have a week to build the creation from tonight’s run, outfit it in fabric that is appropriate for Dia De Los Muertos and launch it with other floating altars for the Noche De Recuerdos down in town. The images above are from my first floating altar last year, and I can hardly wait to manifest a new vision, care of the skies of fall.
