Running for Your Life: Day One

“I would run through the forest until I was exhausted and could sleep; perhaps even as I ripped through ferns and over rotting logs, invisible now beneath the false second rain-forest floor, I would have some kind of vision. So I set off running. But before long, I only felt tired and stopped and turned around and walked slowly back. I had no faith in that kind of thing anymore, I realized. It worked in high school a few times even in college, but it seemed ineffectual now. So I put my clothes back on, descended past rubble and wire, concrete, brush, and stood over the wide fingerlings to twist each delicately under my heel.”

                                                      – “Legend of a Suicide,” David Vann