The pain returned to him like an old friend
I went running yesterday afternoon for the first time since, well, improv training started, which was early October. I've never been able to sustain a consistent running schedule for more than a few months at a time, but returning from these "sabbaticals" is always easier than my mind expects it to be. Curiously, it doesn't hurt to run until the second day back. I think that's because muscles have a poor memory, allowing you an easy first day where your muscles are all like, "Hey? Where are we going? This looks like fun! 'Running,' you call it? How long does it last again?" By the next morning, however, their memory's been jogged (Ha! Jogged.), and you won't be able to trick 'em a second time. The second day always hurts the most.
Which reminds me of something that kept popping into my head during yesterday's run, which is a line from the The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King. Roland the Gunslinger gets shot or chewed by a mutant crab or something, and the brilliant narration that the author gives is, "The pain returned to him like an old friend." Now, even when I was a starry-eyed 10th grader, I thought the Dark Tower books were poor (and I can comfortably say I haven't so much made hungry eyes at a Stephen King book in 2 years, by the way), but for some reason I remembered this line. It struck me when I read it because I had started running back then, and I found that I could completely relate to the concept of "pain" as an "old friend"-- the way the burning feeling in your calves or your lungs can be a source of hurt as well as familiarity. Certain pains can be associated with entire histories. When you stub your toe, you immediately have access to all those moments when you stubbed your toe in the past. You can have whole conversations with that stubbed toe, buy it a few drinks and catch up. Which is why, when I run, I am in dialogue with the hundreds of hours of exercise I've logged. I'm wired to all those moments by bolts of pain.
Which still doesn't excuse Stephen King from using a horribly tired line like, "the pain returned to him like an old friend." But what I want to say is, and I'm about to wax nostalgic, is that growing up, for me, could be described as the process of meeting a cliche, recognizing it as a cliche, and then having to experience it anyway. Like "you can't go home again." Even in high school I knew it was a tired and formulaic theme, but then I went off to college and I realized, "shit, I can't go home again!" as if I'd just myself happened upon the best idea for an award-winning novel ever. If I was to throw down a theory of adulthood right now, I would say you haven't matured until you've gone been wrung through every cliche you ever thought you'd avoid. Furthermore, you don't have the authority to call something cliched until you find out why the cliche exists: the short answer being, because cliches "happen" to every member of society. They're universal, which precludes being original.
"The pain returned to him like an old friend." How profound. But it's been done.
Today's the first day of reading period in Chicagoland, so I'm off to the library to pulverize my gender paper. I'm applying Hegelian theory to the reason women in comedy are perceived as not funny: oh yeah. And I get to quote from Simone de Beavoir and Weekend Update.
I went running yesterday afternoon for the first time since, well, improv training started, which was early October. I've never been able to sustain a consistent running schedule for more than a few months at a time, but returning from these "sabbaticals" is always easier than my mind expects it to be. Curiously, it doesn't hurt to run until the second day back. I think that's because muscles have a poor memory, allowing you an easy first day where your muscles are all like, "Hey? Where are we going? This looks like fun! 'Running,' you call it? How long does it last again?" By the next morning, however, their memory's been jogged (Ha! Jogged.), and you won't be able to trick 'em a second time. The second day always hurts the most.
Which reminds me of something that kept popping into my head during yesterday's run, which is a line from the The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King. Roland the Gunslinger gets shot or chewed by a mutant crab or something, and the brilliant narration that the author gives is, "The pain returned to him like an old friend." Now, even when I was a starry-eyed 10th grader, I thought the Dark Tower books were poor (and I can comfortably say I haven't so much made hungry eyes at a Stephen King book in 2 years, by the way), but for some reason I remembered this line. It struck me when I read it because I had started running back then, and I found that I could completely relate to the concept of "pain" as an "old friend"-- the way the burning feeling in your calves or your lungs can be a source of hurt as well as familiarity. Certain pains can be associated with entire histories. When you stub your toe, you immediately have access to all those moments when you stubbed your toe in the past. You can have whole conversations with that stubbed toe, buy it a few drinks and catch up. Which is why, when I run, I am in dialogue with the hundreds of hours of exercise I've logged. I'm wired to all those moments by bolts of pain.
Which still doesn't excuse Stephen King from using a horribly tired line like, "the pain returned to him like an old friend." But what I want to say is, and I'm about to wax nostalgic, is that growing up, for me, could be described as the process of meeting a cliche, recognizing it as a cliche, and then having to experience it anyway. Like "you can't go home again." Even in high school I knew it was a tired and formulaic theme, but then I went off to college and I realized, "shit, I can't go home again!" as if I'd just myself happened upon the best idea for an award-winning novel ever. If I was to throw down a theory of adulthood right now, I would say you haven't matured until you've gone been wrung through every cliche you ever thought you'd avoid. Furthermore, you don't have the authority to call something cliched until you find out why the cliche exists: the short answer being, because cliches "happen" to every member of society. They're universal, which precludes being original.
"The pain returned to him like an old friend." How profound. But it's been done.
Today's the first day of reading period in Chicagoland, so I'm off to the library to pulverize my gender paper. I'm applying Hegelian theory to the reason women in comedy are perceived as not funny: oh yeah. And I get to quote from Simone de Beavoir and Weekend Update.
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