.: so it comes down to moments: small capsules of decision, little microcosms of life, all miniaturized, all bearing the profound depths of revelation. When these moments, like dense space-time bubbles, float around you in chaotic inversions of gravity, you’ve got to be careful! You are entering a potential feedback loop, and the effects of your actions can quickly– exponentially– mount and drown you in your own eternal return; ever-weightier echoes of your own decision. Sitting in bed yesterday morning, listening to South Park’s mixture of birdsong and concrete-saws, watching the shafts of golden light stream through the eucalyptus and banana-trees, I had to decide– do I get up and put all my complaining into action and go running? Or do I sink into the pillow and sleeping bag nest I have made and abandon myself to early-morning reverie?

The weight of the thing– of the lack of the decision to just do it, as Nike has told me over and over– is apparent to me. I have been an avid doer for most my life, but these periods of relative inactivity have left me with an inertia nearly impossible to overcome. The less I choose to leave my cozy, canyon-home’s luxurious sanctuary at a sweat-breaking run, the less possible the entire enterprise even remotely seems. Angel, from Cages, says in his spoken-word-jazz-act that it is easy to become a potato, to lie on the ground and grow roots and become fixed in position and result. That courage comes from lighting a candle and going to explore the areas of darkness; and most people will never do that, as lighting the candle means, almost inevitably, that wax will fall and burn your hand.

So yesterday morning, my moment of truth, comes– and I actually, for 2-and-a-half minutes, sunk back into my nest and closed my eyes. But two different mantras stung me (as mantras aren’t usually wont to do). One was from the afore-mentioned Angel– “Pain is part of the process of revelation.” And the other from a source far more profane, a quote from Matthew McConaughey that graced the cover-story of my trial issue of Men’s Health: “Just tie your shoes”.

Body creaking, gravity pulling me down, I was out the door in a minute and inhaling the scent of jasmine in painful gulps.