100 Words Per Mile: The Start of Part 2

The poetry of Terrance Hayes, determinism, and anti-vaxxers.

When I drafted 100 Words Per Mile, I divided it into five parts. Part 1 covered the first 103 miles. Part two covers the next 99. Compartmentalization is a huge factor in how I see, process, and behave in the world. I think of and perceive most things mechanically that way. It’s why I wrote this log in the first place.

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November 1, 2020
8.36 miles
1:25:43

On the run this morning, I started to cry, which was inconvenient because I was running with Bill and I’m hoping he didn’t notice.

I don’t have a specific reason, other than a tide of feeling seemed to well up inside of me and there wasn’t much else to do other than cry. There was no specific trigger, nor was there any event or circumstance. As any other human, I shoulder a lot on a day-to-day basis, and occasionally it breaks me. When this happens, I cry a little bit. I’m sure you do too. If not, maybe you should.

I have this copy of Lighthead by Terrance Hayes that I keep in my laptop bag. I also have this terrible habit of arriving somewhere twenty minutes early and because this morning we were meeting at Bill’s house, I thought it might be weird to just sit in front of his house at 8:40 in the morning. So instead I parked at a nearby gas station and pulled the copy of Lighthead from the bag. I’m only about halfway through the collection, because I only read it in moments like this, but the poem I read today is hanging with me. It’s called “God is an American”.

As a whole, there isn’t a lot for me to say about this poem. I’m attracted to Terrance Hayes’ work because he writes lines that hum on a certain dissociated frequency, the same one I try to tune into when writing fiction. This poem starts with “I still love words,” which is something I say even on the days I grow quiet. The closing couplet of this poem is really good, and I recommend you all go find it somewhere, but the line that got me this morning is “Sometimes what I feel has a difficult name.”

Maybe that’s why I started to cry on my run this morning. I’ve mentioned this already, but despite freely calling myself a writer, I’m a pretty poor communicator. The anxiety that comes with freely discussing how I feel can be panic-inducing. I’m terrified by the prospect of publishing this and the only thing giving me the courage to engage with my own fear right now is the idea that I can delete this at any given moment. No one has read this, not yet. This project, like an embryo, could be terminated, and no matter what value someone else might instill in the thing, it will remain my decision to do so.

The weather is getting cooler and COVID-19 is only getting worse. My wife and I are working so hard to make a baby, but I’m feeling unsure of the morality of reproducing at a time like this. There’s a part of me that thinks the pandemic is the planet’s vengeance and things are only going to get worse. Between the 250,000 deaths, the rising number of cases, and the absurd behavior of hurricanes this year, it feels like creating a child is akin to trying to start a fire in the rain. I’m terrified by the thought, but there’s something else I can’t stop thinking about: