Slum Enterprise - Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

Lee set sail through the neighborhood, His legs were his vessel. He picks up his feet and finds himself in a nice familiar stride. Not too fast, not too slow, a fine pace to start the first mile, to tell the body that “hey, we are doing this, hold off on the lactic acid for a while, turn on the mitochondria." Lee runs the opposite way when he drives to work. His neighborhood has no side walks, just wide smooth paved streets. 

He runs deeper into the thick of ramblers and cottages. The first mile of his run is along a highway wall, 30 ft high and painted light brown. He can hear the smell of the exhaust from the swarm of cars on the other side. This highway cuts the city in two right down the middle creating the east and west blocks. He reaches the pedestrian walkway bridge that travels over the highway. Lee crosses and finds himself in the east, there was a lot of room to roam here.

The east block streets were less parallel, it was wavy and unpredictable. It was the nicest part of the neighborhood. The trees near the street curbs were huge, they created a natural canopy over Lee as he ran. He didn't need sunscreen in the summer months because of this. The houses began to get bigger and bigger, the space between them more obtuse. Many had brick siding or wood panel siding painted with high quality exterior paints. 

Lee was well into the safe, comfy neighborhood. Women walked with strollers and older men talked on their pocket screens trying to sound important at their final meeting for the day. Lee wondered why you would ever take a work call while walking in a peaceful east block backdrop. He usually looked straight ahead or up at the sky when running. He loved to stare at the tree canopies swaying in the late autumn day breeze. The gaps in the trees would create a kaleidoscope effect on the street he ran on.

At Bryant Street, Lee emerges from the dense tree cover and well maintained houses and turns left. 100 ft down a slight incline was a gate, it was the back entrance to the city Nature Reserve. Lee opened the gate while still jogging in place and hit the dirt trail to find another tri intersection which was the main route around the Nature Reserve Lake. The last leg of Lee's running route was to circle the lake and exit on the same tri intersection point and all the way back home the same streets he came from. The complete circuit was 5 miles round trip, he could run it in 40 minutes. This took him 5 years of consistent running to get down to this time.

The nature reserve was 150 anchors of natural wetland and prairie fields with a big shallow lake right in the center. It had a visitor building at the far north end and gravel paved trails with benches with dedicated plaques to people who have passed and once loved the place. It was a prime spot for bird watchers, elementary field trips, and the elderly with assistants from the nearby nursing home just a few blocks down from the main visitor building. 

Every native creature in the northern midwest could likely be spotted here. The area where Lee entered was the more forestry section filled with Poplars, Maple and Oaks trees. It bled into the wetlands by the visitor building then it trailed out into the prairie fields bordering most of the lake. 

Most days, Lee rarely saw anyone on the trail, especially on a workday. Lee could always get into a sort of trance then. He let nature and the lack of humans ease his mind. The repetitive motions of running put him in a natural frequency in tune with the surroundings. At this point, Lee’s constantly worrying mind transformed to a blank slate to just take in the information through his senses. 

He was living in the now. The beating of his heart in relation to his running shoes impacting on the leaves covered trail would create a polyrhythm. His breathing would layer on top of that and the swaying motion of his arms would help push the cool wetland and forest air past his body. It was always five degrees cooler down by the trail and lake then up back on the pavement. The entire Reserve was like a big bowl in the middle of the city. It was rimmed with houses and apartment buildings. If Lee looked out into the sky he could see the tops of stone and brick buildings, just a hint of civilization with the added hum of cars far away driving fast down the highway. It smelled swampy and of lake water. He felt blessed to have this Reserve only 2 miles from his house.

Every run turned into a mind altering. Lee could be alone and empty his mind, a mediation practice. He would only let the data frequencies that allowed him not to trip and fall filter in through the senses, the rest was buried. He loved the fast beating of his heart pounding in his ears, the slight burning in his lungs. He could feel his body purging out 8 hours of stress. Lee left the real void to enter a completely different one.

There were no more problems, no more frivolous worries about the future or the past, the present moment was in focus without the usually 80 millisecond delay. Lee only had to focus on his breathing and heart rate, the body was locked in running smoothly through the Reserve hoping to return with something gained, something new, a stray idea that would be caught by chance, like catching a shooting star with a catcher's mit. When the body was unison in the new void, true ideas would emerge. The void would tell you things, truths buried in the subconscious. 

Lee would try to be observant of these hitchhiking ideas passing in his subconsciousness. They had their thumbs out waiting to be picked up in your passenger seat. All Lee had to do was stop the car and push open the door. Most of the hitchhikers would be about Annie, the troubles and turmoil she had been through, and for her to be so strong facing life head on. This made him tear up as he ran. 

Moments of true happiness and gratitude were the preferred hitchhikers. The moments that made life make sense, and overall worth living. Moments of clarity in the chaotic Life System. Lee realized here that living on the planet will never make sense, it never will. For how much he tries to control his destiny, density will reflect the energy back to him, leaving Lee with nothing. No point in worrying about the non-existent future, but it was so hard not to. 

The void would tell him things, secrets that only it knows. Running was Lee’s way to meditate with the goal to expose the secrets. Lee thought back to the symbol he drew, the Kapemni. The orb with infinity triangles. The void was trying to tell him something.