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Sometimes I think too much. I think alot, you know.
I think about girls and animals and bubbles and fuzzy shirts. I think about bright days and dark sunrises, and the way the light catcher on the ferry before breakfast hot hash browns and warm eggs at Waffle House. I think about cell phones and aborted babies like scrambled eggs and I wonder if I could have ended up like that, or my brother. Little chicken babies I wish I had dreams of, lucid ones where I can fly down from the sky and swoop down and save them.
I think about my friend who was pregnant and kept the baby. I think about all the towers and the bridges and the Golden Gate Bridge, bright and red, where every year a few hundred jumpers park their cars and leave their coffee cups.
I think about laptop computer screens, sucking out my eyes. I think about a girl with dark hair and freckles and a shy smile. I wonder how she's doing.
Sometimes, life gets to be too much for me. "There can't be this much good in the world," I think. "Not while I'm still here." Because so many people love me, and they insist that I'm a good person, and no matter how hard I try to convince them otherwise, I can't.
All these people, they say I'm going to change the world. They put all their hopes and dreams on me. It's terrible, because the more people I meet, the more I people I love. And the more people I love, the more dreams I have to break.
So I keep thinking. I think about the birds and the clouds and the trees who have always been here, and they don't have to do anything. They just grow. And I think to myself, "Why can't I do that?" It seems so simple, to live. Find some food, find a nice place, and watch the stars in bed.
Maybe I am too naive. I know it's all wishful thinking. So I keep thinking.
I think about all the people I love, and their bright eyes and pinched cheeks. I remember hugs and smiles and kisses, and the way summer feels, when the air is full of life and whne you breathe, you're breathing life. And I think of the places I've been, as few as they are:
Florida everglades and stars, out in the ocean where the sky's so big you can tell the earth is really round.
D.C., where there's noise, human noise, and the homeless spend their nights in Union Station, down the street from the museums where they hold million-dollar masterpieces.
Chicago, where the wind whips around your shoulders and the buildings are so tall you forget he ground is underneath you.
And Lexington, with its suburbs and silence, and all the extraordinary people are in the back of the classroom. My home.
I start thinking of all the things I miss.
That's the problem with me. I try hard not to think, because once I start thinking, I can't stop remembering. And missing.
And I think about the things I'm ashamed of.
I don't like myself very much, you see.
All of these things I'm ashamed of, they start to pile up. And it gets hard to breathe. And soon enough, I get the idea in my head that if I can't breathe at all, then I can't think. So I run.
I'm not a runner, and my lungs and heart are little lumps. But I run. I run so the world starts passing by and I can't see anything but what's in front of me. I run fast. I run so fast my chest heaves and when I breathe it's all ice and my feet start to come apart and I close my eyes...and then I open them and I'm breathing again, gasping for air. And I'm not thinking anymore.
That's why I run.
9/17/2008 chungyen chang
Posted by changc on September 17, 2008 9:20 PM | Permalink | Hits: 671
Tags:
running, lexington, kentucky, me, writing, prose
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