With a voice like the wind blowing through dry reeds.

Tuesday nights club run. a cold and indifferent wind was blowing across the field. mirroring it we broke into groups of two’s and three’s and hunched stony faced like bad Clint Eastwood impersonators. zen ken joined me, a diminutive samurai in a dayglo jacket. i spoke of my battle during the Sunday morning run he hosts, how hard it was right from the off. i asked him why these runs from hell come along from time to time. the lamplight flashed of his gold rimmed glasses as he cocked his head toward me. there was a silence before he intoned that it is all in the mind, a cruel physiological trick and the only method of dealing with it is to speak sternly to the mind and push on through. i blinked, digesting the thought and he nodded sagely before wondering away to meditate.

setting off for a run i found myself floating at the front with andy the squirrel and richard, the club patriarch, tall and lean and with a voice like the wind blowing through dry reeds. it was the opposite to Sundays leaden legs, light, effortless and free. my mind did not need any rebuke and even zen ken was behind me. the moon rose, full, golden and magisterial and we ran in silence, pilgrims in our moisture wicking shirts, strangely and beautifully quiet apart from the soft thud of our feet marking off the passing seconds of our lives. transcendant.