Wednesday, March 2, 2011

How To Train for a Marathon: A Prologue of Sorts

I'm gonna be doing a How To Train for a Marathon post, seeing how I'm actually training for one at the moment. I'm short of time this evening however, so I'll just leave you with this piece from Haruki Murakami:

"But really as I run, I don't think much of anything worth mentioning.

I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void. But as you might expect, an occasional thought will slip into the void. People's minds can't be a complete blank. Human beings' emotions are not strong or consistent enough to sustain a vacuum. What I mean is, the kinds of thoughts and ideas that invade my emotions as I run remain subordinate to that void. Lacking content, they are just thoughts that gather around that central void.

The thoughts that occur to me while I'm running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky as always. The clouds are mere guests in the sky that pass away and vanish, leaving behind the sky. The sky both exists and doesn't exist. It has substance and at the same time doesn't. And we merely accept that vast expanse and drink it in."

From his book, "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running".

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