I’ve run thousands of miles in Dreamland over the last four years.  But today I did something I never did before while running.  I made music.

Of course, my feet pounding the pavement have always had a barely audible rhythm.  The ever-accompanying runner’s thump. thump. thump…   Rather monotonous.   Self-hypnotic.  And very martial.

But today, along my running ways, I came upon a rather handy tree-debris-fallen type of stick upon the advancing cemetery trail.  That I, for the hell of it, impulsively kicked ahead of me.  And it resonated, as it bounced upon the asphalt and then aside and into the graveyard, in a series of stunning wood-chimed clangs.  And being a guy that always pays special attention to stunning-kind of things, I naturally turned around, ran back and picked it up.  But laying right next to it (your left, my right), was another handy stick.  In a perfectly matching length.  Begging for similar involvement.  So I picked them both up.  And resumed my running.

Now I’ve never played drums before.  I guess I could have held and carried both sticks apart while I ran, like individual batons in a relay race, and never let them tangle.  But, instead, I playfully angled them in upon one another and let them bangle, clink, clatter, and jangle just in and by the act of running.  In other words, I wasn’t banging the sticks together with intentional arm movements.  Rather, I let the free movement of my run bring the sticks together. 

I was stunned!  The air was filled with a bash of sticks.  My body was making music on the run.  Strange rhythms. Unpredictable tones.  Running-man chimes!

As I proceeded along, I began experimenting with holding the sticks longer and lower, and then shorter and higher, and discovered new consequent patterns of chiming, thumping, tapping, and bumpety-gumpety ta-tupping. 

How fucking marvelous a discovery this was for me!  ha.  As I ran, I forgot all about the typical fatigue induced by running and became totally audibly and vibrationally absorbed in this newly-found transformation of energetic self-expression.

What did you say (just think)?  After you really hear the music, you’re never the same?  

You know.