Running with mortality

Would it be strange to say that the biggest part of my running routine takes place round the cemetery? I happen to do this for practical reasons. It is one of the few places in town where the ground is flat and the cemetery is large enough to serve as a track. Running up hills and down hills is all very well, but a runner knows the impact this can have on knee and ankle joints. I am of an age now where I need to watch my ligaments and be aware of my physical limitations. Going round with a limp and a grimace on my face is not an option. I wouldn’t have any recovery time given my routine. Life is not usually that simple. Leisure time is a small window in my world. So busting my knee isn’t a good idea.

So I run up the hill not listening to Kate Bush on the iPod (ha ha). I like to keep my senses sharp - no music. And by the time I get to the top ready to enter the realm of the deceased my muscles burn, my lungs are about ready to explode and my heart is close to bursting. I have to question my masochistic choice in exercise, why put myself through this torture? Is losing a few pounds worth all this strife? I guess it is. I always feel better for it and infinitely less guilty having put my body through its paces. We were not built to sit around doing nothing. Discipline and will power are not exclusive you just have to work hard at it. I’m so ‘yes I can’ Mr Obama might want to consider employing me.

The big black gate welcomes me and I enter the cemetery as a grateful mortal. Here is respite (quite literally), here is peace and quiet. No traffic, no noise, just silence. I’m careful to keep to the walkways. The grassed areas are not for the pounding of feet, I consider it desecration. I wouldn’t want my coffin rattled by some over-zealous runner, so why should the deceased? They wouldn’t care as they’re beyond such things, but I care.

At this point I slow down to a leisurely jog taking in my surroundings – call it a form of meditation – and I focus on breathing. How often do we take the time to still our minds and actually notice what’s around us? I know I tend to allow my chattering mind to take over all else on a daily basis and making it shut-up is near enough impossible. The cemetery does something quite incredible for me. It jolts my mind into paying attention and takes away all the nonsense, for here is extinction. Here is where we all ultimately end up. Here you will find your mortal reckoning.

The graves (certainly the newer ones) are usually beautifully kept: marble tombstones with personal inscriptions from loved ones, sculptures, flowers, even windmills, teddy bears and decorative vases. The children’s graves are particularly poignant as here we have lives that were short-lived and never given the chance to thrive. I dwell upon these the most, my emotions challenged and I remember to be grateful for every living cell in my body; for every breath that my own child takes as she enjoys running around the park in sheer joy. I am thankful for what I have, for what I have been given. It is so easy to forget how small we really are in the greater scheme of things and yet I do sometimes forget and stress out about the most innocuous and unimportant things. This is my wake-up call!

The older part of the cemetery has a lot of dilapidated graves. Stone angels eroded by wind and rain, very much resembling faceless sphinxes with wings spread over the tomb guarding the mortal remains of one whose name can no longer be read on the tombstone. These graves are neglected on the most part. Their close relatives probably passed on themselves in days past and the later generations not much interested in paying those ancestors their respects. Some of the stone tops have cracked and sunk down by a foot or two. I have no idea what’s left of the deceased under there as I rarely have the courage to look inside. My morbid fascination is often negated by a certain squeamishness. This is as close as I want to get to my own mortality. The grave attendants are usually attentive if there is anything ‘untoward’ exposed. They carefully make sure that all remains buried, even if not all that aesthetically. Still, it’s sobering to note that even after death and all the pomp and circumstance that goes with burials the years will roll by and your memory is likely to disappear into the ether along with the crumbling stones. Worst case scenario – your grave spot will be usurped by some other hapless deceased person in 20 or so years; maybe less. Worse still, a block of flats will encroach on the space. Land is highly coveted and space for the dead is fast running out. I think I’ll opt for cremation.

So I’m jogging around the oval cemetery and note how wonderfully alive the place is. The paradox is significant – life goes on. Eternity is here in the continuous ebb and flow of life and death. There are birds singing, squirrels scurrying around and trees and flowers making life a potent source to cling on to. I’m running and wondering if the dead should mind my doing so on their territory. Is it like flaunting my life at them? My feet pound the ground as I run the third lap and yet the dead, inert and silent as they are, focus my attention. The jibber-jabber in my head has been conquered for now. They don’t have to say anything. I know they’re there. They have my respect and my reverence. They are somewhere I have not traversed yet but will inevitably come to one day. It is with fear and awe that I come across a freshly dug hole in the ground, subtly covered over with a green lawn sheet. The cemetery attendants are preparing the ground for the next occupant; another whose life has come to an end and is ready to rest in the earth.

I cannot begin to fathom this moment when life ceases to be. I have no religious belief and am not really acquainted with God. We don’t speak, though the buried catholic part of me still pretends to hold onto something, particularly when I’m about to take off on a plane and God is all I have between land and sky. To be floating around up there, despite the laws of physics and engineering ingenuity making it possible, is beyond my comprehension. Anxiety causes me to latch onto the only deity I have been indoctrinated to know – God. Faith in something allows us to cope with the fear. Perhaps I’m a hypocrite, but I think it’s more about old habits and past religious rituals. Unless I am struck by lightning on the road to Damascus and a disembodied voice should speak to me proclaiming their omnipotence, I doubt I’ll be convinced the supernatural exists. A Yoda thought: with age comes much cynicism.

 I don’t believe in an afterlife and hold fast to the fact that when we die that is it. Extinction! I will have fulfilled my evolutionary imperative in having lived. I do not remember before I was born, therefore I will not remember after I die.

I finally reach the exit gate and jog back towards the road, its traffic and noise and reacquaint myself with my chattering mind. I suppressed it momentarily through the cemetery tour but it rears its ugly head again. I run I run I run. I will run from death for as long as possible. As times wheel relentlessly pushes on and nothing intervenes between now and the future I’ll keep watching my face in the mirror and note the wrinkles as they deepen with age. I think about my own relatives as they move onto the great beyond generation by generation, leaving us the memories and the legacy of life until it’s our time to follow them. I cannot cheat death but I owe ‘life’ my eternal gratitude and from here on I will try to fill my days with good things, to be kind to others where possible and to love with abandon. We can at least aspire to these little things even when presented with the menial and the trivial. Oh how we love to get bogged down in our own self-importance: money, beauty, perfection, fame. Don’t speak to me of material things. It won’t go underground with you when you die.

Next time you feel jaded or besieged by your selfish thoughts go visit the cemetery and take the time to read the inscriptions on the tombstones. Not only will it wake you up from a living sleep, it will make you think and appreciate that which is all around you. Celebrate what has come and gone. More importantly love your life and enjoy it. Alternatively, go for a long run and feel the blood pumping in your veins and the sun shining on your face. Life is indeed beautiful!

A commuters tale

You know things are bad when you hear train announcements in your dreams:

*Bing-Bong*

“The next station is Bromley South,” and so the cheerful disembodied voice continues in perfect BBC English “this is the train to (takes a moment to think about it) Ramsgate and Dover Priory. The train will divide at (again momentary pause) Faversham....this is coach number 5 of 8.”

Really? And there’s me thinking I was home already. It isn’t enough that I live routine and rote when I’m awake; it seems the daily commute is now invading my sub-conscious and wilfully pissing me off. The last thing I want to be reminded of is my routine travel to and from London on the ninky-nonk train. I would have liked my grey matter to have dreamt up something a little more adventurous than mediocrity – instead I’m rewarded a dull REM trip into the realms of British Transport.

The trip to London isn’t so bad – travel off peak and you’re rewarded with a seat that will ensure your osteopath is funded for his next exotic holiday to the Seychelles; the usual exorbitant fare is only slightly less painful on the wallet, something akin to a dull toothache that comes and goes, and your fellow commuters look slightly less feral than the rush hour variety. And so you take your place in amongst the inane monkey chatter that goes on into mobile phones, the exacerbating crap music blaring out of somebody’s iPod and the odd passenger with the persistent need to visit the bog of eternal stench and failing to find the toilet paper – one of whom (upon exiting said bog) leans towards me conspiratorially and informs me:

“Hello love just to let you know, there’s no toilet paper.” Do I look like the loo roll replenisher? Remind me not to sit anywhere near the toilets again.

So, I read my book and usually have an uneventful trip into the London metropolis. I have achy bones and sore muscles but that’s just old age creeping in - a bit of a stretch, touch my toes, bend from side to side and ignore the amused looks from other passengers. Obviously not seasoned commuters like myself. You people live my life for a month and tell me you won’t try to yoga your way off the train next time!

RUSH HOUR:

This is an experience worthy of a television show. “It’s a knockout” comes to mind when I think about the obstacle course most of us embark upon during the rush hours when all and sundry want to get home and don’t care who they push, shove and elbow out of the way to do so. If I could inject myself with a good dose of serotonin this would be the time. I so want the happy hormone to bliss me out of this chaos as the sea of people heaves before me and the battle ensues. Have I ever expressed how I feel about the Circle Line? Tourettes usually goes hand in hand with that expression. To say I know what fish must feel when they’re corralled into those huge fisherman’s seine nets, is close to what the Circle Line is like during rush hour. Having your nose pressed up against the glass doors and having some one’s unwashed arm-pit in your face is not my idea of fun. Why the hell does the damn thing always stop in between High St Ken and Gloucester Rd? Please spare me the extra 10 minutes under the stinking arm-pits and the dumb-fuck tourist rucksacks shoved in my face.

Once you’ve exited the tube and launched yourself into a sprint to get out of there as fast as your legs can carry you just to breathe some fresh, polluted city air (infinitely preferable to arm-pits) there is the next obstacle. On the National Rail platforms you will encounter the urban Serengeti. The feral commuters are congregated here staring absently at the indicator boards. They start off looking passive, meek and mild-mannered - these are the Wildebeest, unfortunate lottery failures who cannot afford to live in London, and condemned to make exhausting trips in-and-out of London on a daily basis - but the stampede is imminent. This is a Darwinian experiment about to be enacted.

The platform is announced and the Wildebeest run for their lives. A lady in clippety-clop high heels pigeon steps quickly towards the train. How can anyone have normal ankles wearing a pair of those? Inevitably like a reed she sways from side-to side and almost loses balance. The evil part of me smirks in derision – ‘serves you right for wearing stupid, impractical shoes’. Mr overweight storms past, arms swinging like a Baboon, intent on securing his double seat (not that he’s paid for two). And here is where the darker-side of my character surfaces.

I’m impatient, inconsiderate and insulting. Right now I hate these people! They’re all turnips who couldn’t care less about anyone else. They push and shove and evil-eye you and try to mow you down. Survival of the fittest! Hell I’m in a war here and they’re the enemy. No forgiveness, no sympathy. This is the jungle!

Once the stampede has died down and people have found their habitual seats and their standing positions by the train doors I have no choice but to sit next to the Baboon. He resentfully allows me half a seat as his legs (spread-wide) cannot possibly tuck in any further. What is it with some men and their sitting with legs wide open like their testicles really are so large they need the extra space? Please don’t get me started on that one!

“This is the Ramsgate/Dover Priory train...”

The metallic caterpillar pushes its way out of the station taking all of us knackered, grumpy and selfish commuters home. To my left Joe Bloggs begins his nasal concerto and begins leaning sideways, drooling in the process. He’s in la-la land and as I look around me I note all the tired, listless, worn unhappy faces of all the people sharing my carriage. Given the opportunity most of them would give up this life at a moment’s notice. The rat race has never looked so appalling to me. That our lives could come to this sad indictment of what modern times mean for a lot of human-beings. I get a migraine just thinking about it. And we’re the lucky ones....

I notice the Gatwick Express to my right and longingly wish I was on that train instead. I close my eyes and dream what I should be dreaming about: a beach holiday with plenty of sunshine. Perhaps my dreams tonight will be a little more interesting – if not, a shrink may be in order.

Yes. No. Maybe so libraries

Today I was asked by a man what I thought of his pink dress. An odd thing you may think and indeed I did think. But this is mostly old news now. He is shy and self-conscious in need of acceptance. He comes in every so often mostly to connect with another human-being. He pretends to be interested in reading a book, but in actuality he just wants to talk. You can tell he's on the precipice of society and alienated for who he is. He's also mentally fragile and it wouldn't take much for him to lose it. You also have the destitute, the misfits, the mentally deranged, the troublemakers...and then you have the ordinary folk. The 'normal' ones, and we thank the heavens for the respite: "Sorry did you say you wanted information...?" the incredulity is palpable and you sometimes feel like shouting: 'WE HAVE A NORMAL PERSON!'

This is an example of some of the minefields we have to deal with. We are social workers, babysitters, counsellors, psychologists, encyclopedias, managers, researchers, geniuses, teachers, the establishment, stress balls, punch bags, geeks, book lovers, vomit cleaners, referees, first aiders... Just some random perceptions collected from members of the public and staff over the years. When you train for the job nobody tells you just how many roles you'll be playing being the librarian. There are days when it all seems to resemble a tragicomedy: Miss smelly bag lady has hogged the window-seat third from the left and fallen asleep. Other days you visibly bristle when affronted by a complete idiot waxing lyrical about his/her rights and your duty to the taxpayer. At this point you pray for divine intervention. Someone to stop you from enacting your hidden desire to kick the turnip out of the building by the scruff of the neck, making sure they feel every stair as they tumble down them.

On the other hand we have Wikipedia:

"Stereotypes of librarians in popular culture are frequently negative: librarians are portrayed as puritanical, punitive, unattractive, and introverted if female, or timid, unattractive, and effeminate if male. The librarian is in charge of a library just as a principal is in charge of a school or a pastor is in charge of a church."

Well I think on that note we should be put out of our misery. Shoot the "puritanical, punitive, unattractive and introverted" librarians and close their maloderous institutions. To hell with literacy and the community. Nobody reads these days anyway, do they? So why do we do it? Why put up with the nut jobs? Because at the end of the day libraries stand for something - a civilised society where everyone has the right to choose a book and not feel marginalised. Where information and access to resources is not exclusive. Where creed, colour, gender doesn't matter. We are all equal in a public library. Shame on those intent on closing them down! We may not be top of the agenda when it comes to being allocated funds but let's not forget the invaluable service we provide to all those aforementioned people who use it. Nobody else will have them but we have them and as god awful as they can be most of the time, we're a lifeline. They too read (sometimes) and as patrons have the same rights as everyone else. It's not about money, statistics or anything. It's really about people.

I wonder when Mr Pretty in Pink will be back to read all about Rillington Place....again.