F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Zen

The Running

by

Runner's High. (Image by Pete Chapman, Image by CC BY-SA 2.0 [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0], via Wikimedia Commons)
Runner’s High. (Image by Pete Chapman, CC BY-SA 2.0 [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0], via Wikimedia Commons)
Years ago, when I had visited my dad and was still into running, I was inspired to write this story. I lived at (and still do) well over a mile in altitude in Colorado and going back home drops me significantly from that altitude. So, (without getting into the science of it all) for a brief period of time people in my position can perform all kinds of physical activity like we are gods.

You can run forever.

Life incredible amounts of weight.

You seemingly never tire.

One day during a late upstate New York afternoon, on a back road very much like the one in this picture, I ran into the growing darkness….

This story has never been published.

 

The Running

© F. P. Dorchak, 1989

I run.

I know no end. It is as if my sole existence…is to run.

My legs pump powerfully down the gravel of a leaf-strewn, backcountry dirt road in late October. I know it is October, I know I am running, but that…that, sadly, is about all I know.

Pump, pump, huff….

And I know that this is an easy run for me. I know not how far I’ve already gone or even what time it was, but it has to be late afternoon, for the sun is low and lonely…the near leafless trees standing as silent witnesses as I sprint past. There is a wonderful chill to the air, too, as my breath turns into wispy ghosts about my face. I seem to be the only one in the entire world and I revel in it!

Pump, pump, huff, huff!

I am at one with creation; a Zen, if you will, as though running and I were one—the ultimate runner’s high, I tell you. My legs are on auto (they have a will of their own, indeed!), but my mind also runs wild, runs free! My wind is limitless, but I feel strange…disjointed…like one forced to look down upon oneself from an out-of-the-body perspective. The ultimate, mobile, isolation tank!

The gravel crunches and fires out from beneath my driving heels…my body and arms slicing through the autumn air like a banshee. Such raw power crackles through me and I feed upon it! I inhale deeply of the air and it further fuels me. I inhale vitality and out do I exhale my corporeally challenged ghosts….

Pump, pump, huff….

I couldn’t stop if I wanted to, for to stop would violate the immaculately sacred…eradicating the flow of chi.

Should I stop I should very well perish.

Perish?

Then why am I running? What is my purpose? Am I in flight? Fleeing something, someone? No—I think not. I feel no such inspired adrenaline rush, yet, in fact, feel quite at ease and free.

No, I am here of my own volition. A training session and nothing more.

Pump, pump, huff, huff….

So I am in training. Good. At least that is something else I know, which means I have a destination to which I head. Vaguely, I recall a house…an old one…surrounded by open fields.

Wait…another image…yes…there’s a barn, nearby, with a dog leashed to the decrepit old barn…a truck parked in the driveway!

Yes! It’s down off a stretch of sparsely populated country road! More memories! I know this house! I am remembering!

But…what do I do?

I wonder, but nothing more comes to mind. No matter, I’ve gotten this far, I must be doing okay. It’ll all come back to me. I simply drink in the runner’s high—why fight it?

Pump, huff; pump, huff….

I return my attention to my running…my surroundings…which I adore!

It is so gentle and serene running among the stands of trees…deciduous…evergreen…the setting sun blinking in and out from behind their forested silhouettes…the leaves blowing across my path or crunching beneath my feet—the cool air against my cheek and that wonderful Octobery must from the earth and leaves!

The sound of my exquisitely tuned body!

My feet pounding the ground (pound, pound!), my stride long and mighty!

I am the perfect machine…nothing can stop me…a finely tuned engine firing through the autumn world unchecked! My breath wisps out from me, like steam from a locomotive!

(pump, pump, huff, huff!)

I weave back and forth across the single dirt lane, stones kicking up in my Mercurial wake. My legs, I chuckle, they pound like pistons! I fly over this gravel road, my mind continually expanding.

I am more than just at one with running…I am at one with my being and my world….

My mind leaps from my physical shell, its supernatural tentacles interlacing with the skeleton-like extremities of the trees…and pierces through the loam-like earth.

I feel the woodland creatures as they roam the secluded countryside…or fly between the trees…and am lifted—elated—a rush of cloudy headiness blurring my mind!

Pump, huff! Pump, huff!

Oh, it is godlike to be in such extraordinary condition!

Though I seem to have an unnerving sense of amnesia, I do remember this: I am one of the best.

No—I am the best!

Running is who I am…what I do. I have always run…and run better than anyone else. My whole being thrills to its sensations!

Come on legs—harder, faster! More…more!

Pump, pump, huff, huff; pump, pump, huff, huff….

 

Oh, but the end is near and I am saddened beyond despair!

Up ahead I spy a break in the trees…a highway crossing my own dirt path (my own—no one else’s!).

Damn, but it was a good run!

Perhaps, I will finally find the remaining answers to my nagging quandaries—it will not be long, now!

But, I can hardly wait until the next time!

Pump, pump, pump, pump!

My body is tuned to exacting, spiritual perfection! Seeing the paved road just ahead I feel an added rush of adrenaline as I kick up my pace ever higher, more powerful! I feel all the eyes of the forest upon me…coaxing me…cheering me! The gravel spits and crackles beneath me as I pull out of the clearing toward the road just a sprint ahead. As I pull away from the tree-shaded back road, I realize I miss the run already knowing that it is over for yet another day—but look forward to the final sprint!

I easily make it to the road and turn onto it…`feeling the pavement pound back up into my feet as I kick off from it.

My kick is high and proud…as I begin to cool down….

Pump, pump, huff, huff, yes, I am proud! Pump, pump, huff, huff, I am proud of what I am, and why not? I have worked long and hard, I—

 

Run.

I know no end. It is as if my sole existence is…to run. My legs pump powerfully down the gravel of a leaf-strewn, backcountry dirt road in late October. I know it is October, I know I am running, but that…that, sadly, is about all I know.

Pump, pump, huff….

And I know that this is….

Pump, pump, huff, huff!

The gravel road lay out before me, the tree-lined dirt road stretched out as far as I can see—

I am back on the path!

Something is wrong—but what is it? What happened? The last thing I remember is…oh, why fight it….

As I fly down this back road, I again feel transcendent from the physical…but now feel as if I also blaze across time and space—galaxies and universes!

Bright colors, I see, bright and fluid!

But I out run the light itself! Nothing escapes me! I am invincible! I am more than just running down a backcountry road…I am soaring through realities…as not just myself, but as every runner that ever runs.

I am more than one runner…more than any run.

I seem able to individually tune into individual thoughts…global gestalts…

I am intoxicated!

Now, I find myself running in the mountains of the southern hemisphere…high into the clouds…or I am in flight for my life from a charging polar bear on a blindingly white background…I am in a race on a coast in the western hemisphere with thousands of runners…on the beaches of tropical islands…on the manufactured tracks of global games!

Oh, how I laugh and feel my energy fire out across universes!

It suddenly all comes back to me, now, as I remember who I am…what I do!

How could I have forgotten?

It is the intensity I devote to each and every run…the high that allows all to forget…and be in the moment. I give everything to all…I am everything to all….

I smile, as I pour it on.

I am Running….

Pump, pump, huff, huff!

 

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

 

2014 Graduation Speech: Were I To Deliver One

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Give Your Life Some Serious Thought! (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Graduation_Thinker_LuMaxArt.jpg)
Give Your Life Some Serious Thought! (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Graduation_Thinker_LuMaxArt.jpg)

Perusing through the Sunday paper, last week, I was inspired by an article that talked about graduation speeches. I’ve never been called upon to deliver one, doubt I ever will, but I thought, hmmm…what would I like to hear in one, were I, once again, graduating from Saranac Lake Central High School or Northern Arizona University…and my life was still ahead of me?

To The Graduating Classes of 2014:

Take control of your life.

When you leave here, setting out for your course through life, you will have all sorts of choices. Some of you will enter the military or government services. So will become celebrities of one kind or another. Some will become academicians. Journalists. Managers. Writers. Film makers. Some will lead simple, quiet lives.

But you will all, eventually, die.

We all will.

How will you look back on your lives at the end?

Will you be satisfied? Even have time to do so? Will you have helped make life a better place to live?

Here is what I ask: be yourself, and don’t cave into the fear mongering that’s out there. Create the world you would like to see, to live in, and spread the joy.

There’s a lot of “evil” out there, and evil is as evil does…but there is also far more good. If there wasn’t, we wouldn’t be here. We would not be enjoying what freedoms we do have, however meager you may, now, feel we are or are not enjoying. Now, there are a lot of arguments out there about protecting those liberties, and the “mechanics” behind said protection, but I’m here to tell you of a very simple way we can all practice without putting ourselves into harm’s way or debating global politics.

Focus on the good in your own minds.

Now, this might sound all Pollyanna nonsense, but think about this: nothing becomes exterior in your lives that has not first existed within your minds.

There is a quote by Joe Queenan, columnist in the Wall Street Journal (not sure if he still is), who said, “People are…sensitive about what they put into their bodies…but will put anything into their brains. They eat free-range chicken, but they watch TV shows about headless suburban demons. They ingest loads of parsnips but never Picasso. Call me a hidebound traditionalist, but the brain as every bit as important as the small intestine.”

I substitute “mind” for “brains,” but the sentiment is adequate.

You put out what you think about, what you concentrate upon. If you think the world a bad place to live, you think everyone’s out to get you, absolutely every one of your actions will telegraph that. Spew that. Absolutely everything you do will be to that end. Consciously or unconsciously, this will be your experience.

If you believe we all get sick the older we get, this will happen.

If you believe all politicians are all corrupt, this will happen.

If you believe in living in fear, this will be your experience.

There is much truth to this on a Zen level, but on an everyday level it also bears itself out. You will not look for optimistic, beneficial solutions. You will only look and see and select the negative side of things. You will only see fear and only do things that will attract and corroborate fear mongering. Because you cannot see past it.

If, however, you look outside the box, as the phrase goes, if you open yourselves up to the optimistic, you have now given yourself at least twice as many options. While living in fear, you only see half the coin. Flip that damned thing over. Put as much effort and energy into the rest of the equation, into positive approaches to living and creating life.

On the Zen side, we’ve all heard the other time-worn phrase that like attracts like. Where do these trite phrases come from? Might there not be some truth to them?

Haven’t you ever notice that when you were in a bad mood, a sick mood, everything appeared dour and wicked…while in a great mood and enjoying yourself, everything seemed happy and optimistic? It’s not just brain chemicals, no matter what your science courses may have tried to impress upon you. Sometimes the effects are real, not just chemically induced hallucinations.

Simply stated, there is a lot to be said for sunny dispositions. Positive outlooks. Even medical and psychological sciences are beginning to see this. Sub-atomic physics.

Find new and creative ways in expressing this philosophy that fits into your life.

Take control of your life.

Change the entrenched paradigms of fear and negativity that seem to be permeating the media. Turn off your damned cell phones and look up, as that one video rapped. Look around, look down. Look into the faces, the eyes, of the people and places you meet. If you’re going into the film or video business, quit making films that degrade or cheapen the human experience. There’s a lot of talk about whether or not video games or movies make killers out of people…but if all you do is immerse yourself into violence and depravity…whether in a movie or video games…all day, and that is the sum total of your daily experience, tell me, what the hell else do you expect of that person when they go out into the real world? In fact, what is real, what becomes real, to someone like that? What the kind of output do you actually expect from that kind of mind? You honestly expect that person to become a preacher, a teacher, a kind and caring parent?

If all you watch are news reports about death and destruction, do you really expect to have a positive outlook in life?

Take control of your life.

If we can all take control of our lives in more positive ways…the benefits will be enormous. Earth- and life-shaking. It can, literally, change the direction of all our lives. Because, and this is another Zen thing, there are things called probabilities out there. Roads not taken, waiting to be taken. And they all intersect, so one road not taken at one point, can certainly be taken later on down that other road taken. Not everything talked about has to be manifested into physical reality. Wars, droughts, climate change. Sometimes they can be manifested in the nonphysical, the mental landscapes of Humanity…and sometimes both. There seems to be a lot of angst and fear out there…and through all this—all I’ve had to say, here—I ask that all of you out there steer clear of that fear and angst. “Go around the rocks,” as I’d once read. Expect a different probability than what we are all currently experiencing. A more positive one, free from wars (or lessened conflicts, at the very least). Where we can all live among each other, tolerating each other, trying to make a go at this thing called life, but not at any others’ expense. Wish for the best, and the best will come. Maybe not completely (not everyone is a saint…but not everyone is a sinner, either…), maybe not exactly as you might expect it to be, but it will come. If we all focus and act in the best possible ways, then what else can one reasonably expect—even if you don’t buy into all I’ve said 100%? What could it hurt? Even 10% is doable. Would make a difference.

Try it.

Take control of your lives.

Congratulations to all of you, I wish you all the best. And congratulations, Alek!

The First Book of the Rest of Your Life (In a Nutshell)

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It's Been A Wild Ride. (Photo credit: NASA's Vomit Comet. Wikipedia)
It’s Been A Wild Ride. (Photo credit: NASA’s Vomit Comet. Wikipedia)

On January 12, 2013, at 11:15 Mountain Time, I completed the first draft to the first new novel manuscript I’ve written since 2008. This is the first in an action/adventure X-Files-like conspiracy series.

I’ve written before as a guest blogger that I’ve been in a slump, trying to understand WTF, and all. Well, since that time, I’ve been giving it the ol College Try and finally, after almost five years, have completed a full manuscript. It’s full of holes and after having analyzed the content, my content timeline and storyline the past couple weeks, I realize have much work to do with…but I have much work to do with it!

Isn’t that great?

After all this time I have a project in-hand, and it’s written out, warts and all! Sure, I’ll butcher and maim the hell out of it, but the material is there. In novel-length format. It’s not something I’d written years ago and shelved, not a short story, but a full-blown book. I’m sure many writers operate the same, but my second drafts are the toughest efforts, most rework-heavy drafts, but when I get into the mode of initial, first-draft writing, I just vomit it out. This manuscript was actually a little different, more a series of brutal dry heaves early on, but once I found the Zen, it became one big Vomit Comet for the finish line. I intentionally ignored some of the subplots and just wanted to get the basic story out. I don’t usually do that, but I did not want to lose what momentum I had going (given, you know…), because I’d tried that on this manuscript, and felt the moment start to suck wind. So, I forewent my usual M.O. and did things a little differently. No matter how good the process, it seems every book I start is different in some manner.

So, I’ve been pouring over the storyline, finding holes, finding issues, and think I finally have what I need to begin the actual rework (I actually began rewriting yesterday). And…I’m actually quite excited about it. They’ll be my “conspiracy books,” my nod to the X-Files and some other shows (I’d like to add Twilight Zone in there, but don’t know that I’m much of an O. Henry/Rod Serling kind of writer, I’ve finally admitted to myself…but you never know…). You know, if I can actually sell them. But I love the idea, the characters, and it has potential for an on-going series beyond three books. It could well become, well…

Yes, it could become a thing.

From my POV, anyway.

As much as I still want to write everyday life weird and paranormal, there’s still this other side of me that wants to do X-Files kinda work, and now I have this outlet to do so. And I’m real happy about it. I’m happy I have some meat to work with. I’m happy to have new energy out there. New work. And it’s already getting in the way of responding to e-mail, posting blogs and tweets, and getting household chores done.

So, yes, I had a huge dry spell there for a bit, but things appear to be looking up.

Alice in Chains’ “Nutshell” is playing on Pandora right now (love this band, and this tune—which epitomizes much of my series’ tone). It’s germane to my series. So, I leave you with an important stanza that sums the series:

“We chase misprinted lies We face the path of time
And yet I fight
And yet I fight
This battle all alone
No one to cry to
No place to call home.”

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