Tuesday, May 08, 2007
The Bonnie Bootie Rides Again
I’m back! Yes, you knew I was gone, you just forgot, you insensitive cad you. Well that’s okay, I had lots and lots of fun. I’ll have photos soon – of the gorgeous north coast springtime and the delightful zacktasticness. Meantime, I’m so freaking busy here at my desk that it’s not really feeling much like the “off season” I was hoping for. I know – let’s have a little story! That’ll mellow my harsh! Ah, but which story… one that is full of angst and stress to start with, and then lightens up and has fun, I think. I think I know which story that is, actually. How many licks to get to the center? Let’s find out!
I’d had a long hard week, from which I was having difficulty psychically extricating myself. I kept finding myself grinding my teeth or clenched in a tension-slouch or otherwise failing to live in the “now” of my not-working-weekend. But with only a couple of days off to get away from the office, I really didn’t have time for residual grousing. I had to do something to snap my ‘tude, and quick - or the ‘tude was eventually going to snap me. It was that simple.
A run, was what I decided to do. That should be quick, mostly painless, and wouldn’t involve other people – of whom I’d had about enough. It was time to unwind outside in some inner space. I pulled on some appropriate gear, gave my hamstrings a quick stretch, and got ready for the wide open country beyond my living room walls.
It was a beautiful day, crisp in the shade and warm in the sun, a harmonically blue sky overhead studded with well-formed, modestly-sized clouds, late spring blooms still perfuming the gentle ocean breezes…. I cued up a vigorous mix on the ‘pod and set out down the street.
It was rough sledding, I tell you what – I felt every step, forced every breath, had to pace myself through every turn and corner along the way. Nothing felt natural; nothing felt easy. Once I got into the park I tried to switch to endorphin-fueled autopilot but the groove just wasn’t there. I pounded the pavement and it pounded me back, but I’m a stubborn old cuss and like hell was I going to give up. I had set out to take a run, dammit, and I would take one if it killed me.
Of course, that’s hyperbole. Though I was uncomfortable, I was far from death. I just forced my way along my familiar, flat, perfectly manicured course, down JFK, past the conservatory, across at Stanyan, and back again through the primordial ferns and past the rhododendron dell. And along that very stretch, shortly before the concourse and the museum courtyards, I plodded my wheezing perspiring self down the path, focused on my music and my mechanics, expecting no harm, when I encountered, just by that bronze hedge-bound statue of a man in knickers, a barmy band of pirates!
It was about a dozen or so people, neither very old nor very young, in varying degrees of pirate garb. Some merely wore cargo shorts and a bandana; some had tricorns, eyepatches, and fake shoulder-parrots. One even wore an antique naval uniform, royal blue with buttons and pasmanteri and a brave little kepi; he was bound by a ludicrous rope that was held by two giggling pirates who taunted and berated and threatened him even as he professed unfaltering fealty to some ridiculous sovereign or other - and then they all started bargaining vigorously about freedom and booty, and the giving up or retention of one or both of these. There were swashbuckling, swordplay and growls of laughter. Everybody was hooting and cavorting and capering and basically pirating themselves up a right good time.
I probably gaped as I ran past but they couldn’t have cared less. They were getting their pirate on and I had nothing to do with it. Pirates, out a-pirating. Right here in my ostensibly civilized backyard. Buried doubloons in Golden Gate Park. Planned spontaneity. Hilarity. Life. It made my head spin. By the time I looked up from my thoughts I was halfway past the museums, auto-trotting along with a steady gait as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I felt strong. I felt good. And then I realized: Those blasted gallivanting buccaneers got my groove going again. So that was their nefarious plot. We’d just see how far it got them. Into my booty, or otherwise.
A few minutes later I was running out of the park and back home at the rose garden. I reached the traffic light at Fulton and a dear friend pulled up alongside me in the dense auto traffic of Highway 1. He hooted and waved and called out to me. The batteries on my ‘pod had run out; there was no competing sound. He said later that I just didn’t hear him; he could see that I was focused on my running and there was no way he was going to be able to break through. Instead, he just drove on over to my house where he was going to babysit for us for the evening.
Once I got home too he told me the story of how I hadn’t noticed him and we all had a good laugh at my single-mindedness. I didn’t know at the time how to tell him that I wasn’t just spacing out: It were pirates holding me captive, matey. Me, and my bonnie booty too.
