The sun rose at 5:27am this morning in Seattle. (And, yes, the sun actually showed its bright face and illuminated the colorful blooms of late Spring, the uneven sidewalks, the distant mountains, and the nearly cloudless skies.)

I started running at 5:45am. I noticed:

• a homeless man, smoking a cigarette, seated in front of a drug store. When I waved hello, his scraggly voice replied, “GOOD MORNING!” about three times as loud as necessary.
• a large white van parked askew, half on the sidewalk, half on the street, and its two occupants standing behind it, smoking cigarettes.
• a young woman, probably in her early twenties, with glasses, cutely disheveled hair, ambling towards me… and smoking a cigarette.

Conclusion: The smokers take advantage of the morning.

Ahem. To continue:

• a man standing at a bus stop, clutching a bag. I heard him before I saw him. He was on the other side of the street, but I could clearly hear him reading the timetable at the stop. He, too, was speaking about three times as loud as necessary.
• two crumpled Slip n’ Slides. (One each in front of different houses.) These were clearly artifacts from the unseasonably warm weather Seattle enjoyed yesterday.
• a station wagon that was the victim of malicious mischief: It was (very recently) wrapped in toilet paper and on the hood of the car was a large mass of… something. It could have been vomit. It could have been several pints of humus. It could have been peanut butter mixed with finely diced tomatoes. You get the picture.
• a large tree adorned with three yellow ribbons tied around its trunk.
• another tree from which dangled a plastic bag filled with more plastic bags. A hand-written sign underneath the bag requested that dog-walkers assist in keeping their lawn clean.

Conclusion: Trees are useful for communicating information.

More:

• an elderly woman wearing a reflective orange vest, squinting from the light filtering through the trees into her wrinkled face.
• a not so elderly woman sitting on her stoop, talking on her cell phone. She didn’t acknowledge my wave.
• a fluffy black cat skittering across the sidewalk upon spying me approaching it.
• the newspaper man (we apparently don’t have newspaper “boys” in Seattle; furthermore, all these men drive beat-up sedans) throwing the Sunday paper towards houses… only to realize that he may have missed, thus requiring him to walk up to the house, locate the errant paper, and toss it onto the steps.
• several lean men wearing brightly-colored, tightly-fitting clothing on their super-slim, nearly silent road bicycles.
• one older woman sitting in a coffee shop, staring out the window (not at anything in particular; she looked like she was staring at something in her memory).
• two white ghosts, who, upon approaching them, were actually two nuns, who, upon approaching them even closer, were actually probably Somali women dressed in flowing white linens.

I won’t mention all the flowers, the snow-capped mountains, the shimmering lake, etc. Amazingly, that’s the “usual stuff” here.

I stopped running around 6:45am, after completing a little over six miles.

I know, right? Who runs for an hour? When I started running about a year ago, I would have never anticipated that I would run six miles with this kind of gusto. In many ways, running has changed my life: I’ve learned a lot about patience, setting goals, pacing, the patterns of the morning, and mastery. I eat better (though cookies remain a weakness), I feel better, and, though I have not lost weight, I have gained definition. And though “run six consecutive miles comfortably” was never on my “Things to Do Before I Die” list, I now confidently know that I can run the entire loop in Central Park with ease. And that’s definitely something I want to do before I die.

We all subscribe to the illusion that we have control over our lives. Our awareness of this illusion shifts with contexts, time, and experience. I don’t dare suggest that we have absolutely no control over our lives… though I certainly don’t think that we have total control over our lives.

And during those occasions when we feel in less control than we’d like, it helps to pursue those things that we can control. Accomplishing things, even if seemingly insignificant, helps us feel better (whatever “better” actually means). Believing and witnessing that we are effective lifts our moods. Try it.

There are all the things I don’t want to do (study for my exam, figure out how to ship stuff a cross country, etc.) that currently and insistently demand my attention. And then there are all the things I would like to attend to (find a place to live in New York, spend time with The Beau, etc.), but I cannot as circumstances are disagreeable. And then there are the details that cause me sadness: Saying good-bye to my friends, finishing up my clinical duties here, leaving this beautiful city, etc.

So, instead, I run. Because I can.

That also explains why I write.