With Apologies to Miranda July

I hit my stride this rainy morning run at mile four, just in time to sync my pace with a man, rounding the bend, a man with a yellow shirt and the most defined calves. He runs on the right side of the trail, I on the left. Like granite, these calves. For some time we run abreast, two yards between us. I keep pace with the sound of his stride. Running like this, I imagine that we are two posts to some kind of a threshold, that we create a gate through which all other people on the trail must go. After passing through this gate everything will be different -- there was a time before and a time after. Runners, walkers, stroller babies, as they pass through us they all must feel something, some kind of transformation, or a heightened state of presence. Acknowledgement of nothingness? Stardust? Do you believe in this? I telepathically ask the man with the calves. Of course, he responds. It is in fact the only thing I have ever believed in. We are talking about this gate thing, yeah? Yeah. And that we are somehow and in some fundamental way altering the state of the people who pass through us? Or that, if not responsible for said alteration, we are at least witnesses to it? It is plain to see that this is the case. What does it mean to them? What is happening as they change from one way of being to the next? It means something different for each person. Like because we are all snowflakes? Exactly. The snowflakes. Is there anything bad that happens when they alter? Could their lives be hitting some sort of apex the split second before passing us, and, in our presence, the line drops, and not knowing it they will never, ever, be as happy/healthy/at peace as they once were? That seems right. Is it our duty to warn them? Why? What if the change is good? Wouldn't we be depriving them of some unknown happiness, greater than any they had previously known? But we can't know. No, we can't. Then they should be warned. I am going to warn the next one. Go ahead. And so when a very blonde woman in a Heineken shirt jogs past us I try so much to beam my understanding of the situation into her, but knowing that this is a lot to explain and that she is coming very close and plus she has earbuds in and that generally messes with these sorts of things I try to reduce to message to just one word that can encapsulate it all. GATE, I think loudly. GATE GATE GATE. Whether she understands or not, the woman runs through us. Hours later, when I get back to my house, I stand in front of the mirror, go up on my tip toes, and look at the backs of my legs.

Halloween

Is a time when you can dance with both Korra the Avatar and Frida Kahlo and it is okay and appropriate to do so.