Disclaimer: West Side Story and all its affiliated affiliates are not mine. Tragically. Though I like to claim Riff and Chino as my own, copyright laws do not endorse this.
A/N: And so I bring you the latest in a medium-length string of one-shots, because I've learned my lesson about my attention span and refuse to embark on another multi-chapter saga that will take me, invariably, five years to finish. This was inspired by a recent trip I took to Manhattan, where I saw all the sights my favorite fictitious gangsters would have seen on the day-to-day, wandered up and down the streets of the West Side, and even saw WSS on Broadway! Yes, I was more excited than a twelve-year-old at a Justin Bieber concert. No, I am still never emotionally ready for Riff's death. Gets to me every single time. Anyway, that's the reason for this mildly pointless story, as well as for all of the unnecessary references to landmarks and street names. Useless information makes me happy. Enjoy, and I'll get out of the way now!
Some say the world will end in fire,
some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire,
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if I had to perish twice
I think I know enough of hate
to say that for destruction ice
is also great
and would suffice.
-Robert Frost
Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light
-Dylan Thomas
Snap
Whatever's eating you, you let the world see it and you're dead. Emotion is weakness. Be moved and others find they can move you. Bend and you break. Give up control, even for a second, and you find that few people are going to trust you long enough to control anything ever again. So you keep it in. Stone faced. Stone minded. Unchanging and unaffected. You become the rock they spend all their days trying to chip away at. As effective as a drop of rain falling on a mountain.
You could say I pretty much wrote the book on keeping cool. It was a joke, back when we had time for stuff like jokes, that maybe they shoulda named me Ice in the first place. Sure had my head on straighter than that joker, anyway, I did. I spent my days in a state of deep-freeze cool. 'Course, I had to explain it all to them on my own. Yeah, I told them, great, but ice melts. A riff can stay in your head forever, cooler than anything you can hold with our hands. Jazz can hold anything, your laughter, your tears, your screams, it can swallow it up and make it into something that dances twelve feet above your head, free and untouchable. Ain't nobody ever heard jazz lose control, slip and give something away it's not supposed to. Even the mistakes are perfect, exactly what they're supposed to be. I live my life like it's a slinky wail coming out of a sax. Just try and catch it. Not on your life, not with your bare hands.
Sometimes it helps me to think about things like this, on days when I find myself alone and need some reminding. It doesn't make the stuff piling up any easier, really. Positive thinking is all well and good but no substitute for an old-fashioned miracle. But it reminds me that I can do it, I can live like this, I can keep this going. And that I have to. And that those two things are more or less the same.
The sun is just starting to reflect off the windows of the buildings sprouting up around Battery Park, tinting the windows into sheets of gold as I lay flat in the grass and watch the manufactured sunrise. It's too early still to see the real thing; sun won't crest over the hundreds of feet of skyscrapers for another hour or more. But you can still see the banks and boardwalks lit up like a ten-karat necklace, can still see the statue shining green and gold in the harbor. Rusted and secondhand and glittering and beautiful. Our Lady Liberty. This early in the morning, guess that's enough for me.
I come out here sometimes Sunday mornings, real early, duck out the fire escape and jump the last story to the street without pulling the ladder down so's I don't wake anybody up. Trust me, it's not courtesy, it's so nobody knows I'm leaving. Most of the time I could sleep in a little more if I chose, but Sundays I gotta make sure I beat it before Tony and his ma get up and go to St. Patrick's on 48th street for eight o'clock mass, before they can try and sweet-talk me into going. It wouldn't work even if they did try it; I don't give a shit about that burning bush mumbo-jumbo, but it's tough taking people talking down to you all the time. Non-believer. Dropout. Delinquent. Keep off the street. Confess your sins (like for me they have that kind of time). Get off the world. Go to hell! It's tough keeping cool through that, even for me who's got so much practice at it. It's worse than insulting a guy's mother. You're insulting his way of life. Everything he is and stands for, even if it's only because it's the only way he knows to keep standing. That cuts deep. Hits where it hurts. Sometimes I slip up. I let 'em know that Riff ain't gonna take that with a bow and a smile.
And that's when they stick a white-hot umbrella in your chest and open it up wide. You let the world know it can hurt you and it will. That's why the world can't hurt me no more. I'm not gonna talk about why, but at this point nothing can shake my mask. No one can make me lose it. That's why the Jets are the greatest. 'Cause I'm letting my people go, and we're walking to the promised land of immortality.
I pick myself up and brush the stray pieces of grass off the seat of my jeans. Can't lay there too long, people start to think you're dead. Last thing I need this morning's a trip to the rue morgue. Checking a table of fake Rolexes an Israeli set up near the fence, I figure the time to be about 6:30 in the morning. I'm always up early, whether or not I have to hit the streets or I choose to. It's the best time. Quietish, still. Softer colors. Dimmer lights. The perfect time of day for me to fire some heat and light and feeling into, before there's anyone around to see me do it.
Today, it's going to be Broadway. I pick one of Manhattan's north-south paths almost every morning, six days a week, and follow it from Tony's apartment to Central Park North. The length of this whole borough, not counting Harlem (beyond where the light touches. I don't worry myself none 'bout Harlem). Gotta make sure my streets are okay. Some guys I know run in Central Park, makes 'em feel tough to stare down tourists or East Enders walking their dogs like cowboys at the OK Corall, but it's not for me. I don't know my way around the park real well, and I'm not one for running laps. No circles. I like to be going somewhere. And besides, the streets absorb what I'm giving off better. Heat gets sucked down the sewers with the rtas, fear disappears into the cement. Every day, this cleaning. And I'm cool again.
Without stretching or any other stupid prep designed more for the benefit of the people watching than for me, I set off at what I figure to be about a seven-minute mile across the little blip of a street and up the right-hand sidewalk of Broadway. It's not my most punishing pace; if I happened to be running in the park with Bullet or Alpha or any of those other has-beens that like to loop the reservoir (more like never-beens, but I let 'em pretend), I'd be dripping sweat pushing out five-minute miles and leaving scorch marks on the grass. But it's six or seven miles from here till Central Park North, and besides I need the time to think about more important things than how my abs look under the pale glow of a sunrise.
For instance, I muse as I pass into the financial district, an endless forest of banks sprouting up around me like prison walls, what I'm gonna do 'bout them Emeralds. They've been hanging 'round our turf too much for my liking these past couple of weeks, and the guys are looking at me to tell Bullet and his boys what's what. I ain't scared of that pussyfooter, ain't no way nohow, but that don't mean I wouldn't say no to a few good men to back me up if things started looking dirty. That's how we always used to rumble: man-to-man with a second, or a full-on brawl with everyone all up in the other gang's space, throwing punches and bricks and whatever we could get our fingers on. But Bullet challenged me. Just me. Said bats and chains were fair game but I ain't fixing on using none of that. If he wants to fight it out with Riff, then he'll see what ol' Riff's got to give all on his own.
Which is why I'm running, as I shake out my arms to relieve the tension in my shoulders. I ain't never been out of shape a day in my life, but it don't hurt to be prepared. And besides, it calms me down I ain't scared, I tell ya, but I'm more high-strung than a rabbit in Elmer Fudd's sights. And I don't know exactly how to make that go away. Jesus, I miss the days when I and Tony led the Jets together. He'd be running next to me now, pushing my pace, helping me talk it all out. But he's asleep, like all the other boys are. I don't like the way he's been acting. Seems like he's not just easing out of power, he's slipping his way outta the Jets altogether. Leaving the whole establishment weighing down my shoulders. And that ain't something I'm too sure I can handle. God knows I got enough on my plate as-is. Is there room for any more?
My path takes me right past the brick-paved heart of Wall Street. It's that time of the morning when the businessmen are starting to pour in from all directions. It may as well be raining suits, ties, and briefcases, and every one of em's got a coup of overpriced coffee in their hands. In my jeans and tee-shirt I stick out more than a little, but I still get some amusement out of watching these white-collar cats. It's a better kick than the Central Park Zoo. Watch the human banker in his natural habitat, intent upon the kill.
And then before I can catch myself, I've tripped over the curb, ground rushing up at my face in painfully slow motion as I try to get my hands up in time… With a crash, I tumble off the pavement and land ungracefully in a pile in the middle of the street. People are looking at me like I'm the one in the zoo now, but I don't care, don't even notice. I've got eyes and thoughts only for the thing that made me lose focus and trip in the first place. Just another man in a suit and tie, his briefcase a little worse for the wear. A tall man with a slight build, quick-looking eyes spread maybe a tiny bit wide over a slightly crooked nose and a mouth trapped with a semi-permanent hint of a smirk. The eyes are brown, not green, but that hardly matters. What does matter is that those eyes met mine after I drew attention to myself busting my ass like a damn fool, and I can tell by the look we're sharing that the realization I'm going through is mutual.
The man was walking on the other side of Broadway heading for the JP Morgan headquarters, but he crosses over to me just as I'm getting back up on my feet. Neither of us take our eyes off the other, just sizing the other up, trying to assess the situation and see who'll snap and say something first. But I can hold out for hours. He at least owes me the decency of opening his mouth first. I think he can feel the simmering hatred burning through my arms and legs, urging me to run or fight or anything to ease up on this tension, but I know that none of it shows up on my face. It only comes up to a certain point. Beyond that, no one knows I'm hurting. Beyond that, I never lose control.
He coughs, clearly uncomfortable. Well, good. As the silence crosses the border between surprised and strained with no intent of stopping before it gets to vengeful, he finally opens his mouth.
"Hello, Ryan," the man I'm now a hundred percent sure is my father says awkwardly.
"Hey." My voice is tight and sharp, and I can feel powerful emotion threatening to play out on my face. No. No no no no. I snap my fingers subtly once, twice, three times, a hard and explosive motion, like I'm punching someone with the sound. It's like I'm opening a valve on an overheating boiler. Either this snap, or I will.
"H-how have you been?" My father stammers. I see him take me in, how thin I am, how worn-out the clothes I borrowed from Tony are, the way I've traced out the word "Jets" in graffiti-style letters across both of my sneakers in permanent marker. I don't know why I don't feel more looking at his face. I should feel something. Some remnant of the childhood I gave up when my dad told me to beat it from his place and I hit the streets. But I don't. No conflicted feelings, no mixed love and blame that social works and bleeding hearts love to look for so much. Nah, it's way more black-and-white than that. I can't bring myself to feel anything but hate.
"Oh, I been fan-tastic," I drawl, drawing out the word and leaving him to draw his own conclusions. "And you, pops? Been doin' pretty good for yourself, huh? JP Morgan? Wouldja lookit who's hit the big time now?" This, if my boys, my Jets, could see it, would make 'em proud. Can't throw a Jet for a loop. Can't break his stride. He'll break your neck while whistling Dixie. Toss in his face the man who destroyed his life and he's got this suave, smooth voice, he's unconcerned, he's the coolest cat on the block 'cause he can't touch him now. The Jets, the greatest. But if they could see in ol' Stonewall Riff's head right now, they'd see I'm as hot as Action on a bad day, itching for a fight and a bad idea. Gotta keep it under control. Be cool, Riff. He sees it and you lose.
"Yes, I've worked hard for it," he says absently. I choose not to hear the jab in those words, even though I could. That would be giving him way too much credit, that kind of veiled insult. Besides, banking work is clearly the last thing on his mind right now. "You're… you're what, nineteen now?" he grasps.
I laugh, even though my fists are screaming at me to jump him. I'm your son. Don't'cha think maybe you should know that? "Seventeen, daddy-o. Not eighteen till next February."
"Oh. Right," he says lamely. Guess he picked a lousy conversation starter. "Do you w-want to go g-get a drink or something?"
Now my smile is a real one, not a cover. "At seven in the morning? Jeez, I really got'cha spooked, don't I? Well if it'd help ya, I an't about to say no. Sure, pops, you can buy me a drink." Now I know he never said nothin' 'bout buying, but neither of us comment. We're both hung up on the bigger issue here: why'd he offer, and why'd I say yes? We haven't spoken in four years. I ain't never wanted to. Nothin' much to say, really. But something in my gut is pushing me to say yes, to go with him and hear what he's got to say, maybe get in a word or two edgewise. And I didn't make it to where I am, leader of the Jets, the swinginest gang north of the Brooklyn Bridge, by ignoring what my gut had to say. So I take him up on it. Worst thing that could happen is that I lose it for a second and slug my old man in the jaw, plus I get a free beer out of the deal.
Wait, did I say worst?
Anyhow, my old man gives me a second to finish collecting myself from the pavement, and then he switches up his grip on the briefcase and starts leading the way uptown on Broadway. Something in my head finds it weird for me to be following him, after I've spent so many years running headlong in the opposite direction from him, but since I don't have a damn idea where he's headed and don't know the paying establishments in this part of town as well as someone with a wallet would do, I swallow my pride and shadow his footsteps. The sun's crested one of the smallest buildings on the street, sending beams of light shooting through the cracks to blind passersby at unexpected times. As if it wasn't hard enough for me already, having no idea where I was going…
He doesn't say a word to me, and I don't say anything back. In absolutely perfect silence we head up Broadway, took a left onto Rector Street, and through some silent means of communication I didn't know I had with anyone who wasn't a Jet both turned off and entered this run-down hole-in-the-wall underneath a handful of apartments, lovingly titled "Mitch's Bar" in handpainted letters across the door. It didn't look like much from the street view, surrounded by the old-style banks and office buildings with more columns than the New York Times, none of them for any purpose like holding up a roof that I could see, but inside it had a comfortable look to it. Of course it was empty at this time in the morning, but the air still had this smoky cast to it that made it strangely easier for me to breathe. I'd long since run out of cigarettes, and in this situation my nerves were strung tighter than piano wires. Even if it was secondhand, I was grateful for anything to take the edge off.
We took two stools at the bar, me trying to lounge across the wood surface with the least level of care on my face that anyone had seen since Jesus Christ walked the streets (or so I'm told). I was so completely hung up on what I thought he could say, so completely and unreasonably nervous, that the only way I knew how to cope was to fake it as much as I could, look as cool as possible. From what I'd seen of the world, the longer you faked coolness, the more people believed it and were too afraid to mess with you, and then you really were walking on top of the world, not just saying it. Wasn't so sure that was gonna be the case here, but no one ever busted his neck for trying.
An overweight man in a stained apron with a bristly mustache ambled over to the two of us, washing out a mug with a towel so stained and nasty that he was probably doing more harm than good. This, far as I could tell, must've been Mitch, though if I'd'a been him I'd'a used a fake name on the front of this building. Wouldn't want anyone catching onto the idea that I owned a joint like this, surrounded by all the impressive pointlessness of Wall Street just outside the window. "Can I get you something?" he asked in a raspy smoker's growl.
My father looked at me sideways. Maybe he was just remembering that I told him like five minutes ago that I was only seventeen, and not exactly legally encouraged to do what he'd invited me out to do. Oh well. Too late for that now, pops. If you wanted to rat me out, I'd be more than happy to do the same and let ol' Mitch know exactly why I hate you so much. I don't want to go into it, and neither do you. It's in both of our best interests to let me have the damn booze and move on with our lives. I didn't say a word, didn't have to. Years of leading the streets with a snap and a gesture trained me to say an entire paragraph with one look and a nod. He didn't say so, but I knew he caught every word.
"Whatever you've got on tap for me," he said to Mitch. "It's been a rough morning."
"No shit," I agreed lazily. "Scotch on the rocks. Mostly scotch, go easy on the rocks." There's nothing worse in the world than watered-down scotch. What a waste of good alcohol. My dad shoots me another look that I read relatively easily; he's not exactly overjoyed that I basically ordered a glass of liver failure and, in the process, out-machoed him at his own bar. Well, don't ask me out for a drink if you won't let me drink my scotch in peace.
"Just a minute," Mitch says, ambling off again. He reminds me for half a second of a displaced asylum patient, without any real idea of where the hell he is or what he's supposed to be doing, still cleaning that perfectly fine glass like a nervous tic. Speaking of nervous tics, it's really amazing that I'm not flicking light switches on and off endlessly while we wait for Mitch to come back with whatever we ordered. I'm still not scared, I don't think there's anything alive that can scare me anymore, but I'm about four seconds away from a panic attack. Why is beyond me. He can't hurt me. He can't even touch me. But questions are boiling up inside me without a vent, without release, and soon I'm just going to snap in half unless somebody says something.
He does say something. "Thanks." Mitch has given him a half-pint of some nameless tap beer, and an eighth of scotch for me. Thank God for the merits of alcohol, as I take half my glass down in one. The smoke isn't doing it for me anymore; my nerves are still stretched to the breaking point. I ask anybody to sit here in this situation and not want to throw themselves off a bridge or do something drastic. Someone has to bring up the subject that's staring us both in the face from the smoky table in the corner of the bar. For God's sake, I'm sitting in a bar at seven in the morning with my estranged father who for all I know doesn't even know that his son's become a New York gang leader. I think somebody has to say something about it. Under no circumstances would this ever be normal. And you know I ain't exactly the one to ask if you're looking for a judgment on the normal-ness of a situation, but even I know this is ranking pretty low.
"Good?" he asks me, indicating the scotch.
I shrug. "I know what I like. No need to get crazy and screw with something that's good."
He nods sagely like this was a hell of a lot wiser than it actually was, looking into his beer glass for answers. This little gesture, this second of silence when he chooses not to respond to me with words, just a nod and a look not even in my direction, is the last thing I can handle. It's nothing, not in the scheme of things, and we've got quite a scheme to work with. I know this better than anyone else. But it's too much. It's the last thing. It's nothing, and it's everything. It's nothing the way a lighted match is nothing.
I snap.
"For God's sake, will you just say it?" I yell. Without fair warning, he jumps about half a mile in the air, making tidal waves in his glass of beer. I don't know why he's taken so damn aback; I mean, didn't we both know it was only a matter of time before this happened? "We're both thinking it, why won't you fucking say it? Why'd ya get rid of me?"
At least now he has the sense to look uncomfortable, even though he's still doing it into his glass and not into my eyes. "Ryan, that's not what happened…"
"Yeah? 'Cause that's really what it looked like from my end, pops. What wouldja call it when you opened the door and told me to get the hell out 'afore you called the cops on my worthless ass? Or 'afore you pulled out your shotgun and took care of it yourself? What wouldja call that? Ya can't say we were taking a break, dad, a vacation. You threw me out. Why?"
His hands grip the glass so hard his knuckles are visible, straining white through his skin. The tension on his face is strong enough to kill, but I don't have enough patience left in my heart to give him time to conquer himself and find all the right words. I don't give a damn how he feels. I need to know. I can't pretend that this hasn't haunted me every day, every night, every moment of my damn life that I haven't been able to drown it out with the Jets or my girl or something else loud and powerful and vibrant that overshadows it. My mother got arrested and the courts sent me over to my dad when I was thirteen, and he kept me for a record two months before he threw me out with nothing but a black eye and three dollars. Don't I deserve to know why? I know what I've done since to deserve being treated like that, but before, I was a kid. Doesn't every kid deserve better than that?
"Look at me!" The control I'd gained over my voice has shattered again, and again they are so loud that he cringes. Oh, get used to it. If ever I was entitled to make a scene, it'd be now, and goddammit I'm going to make a fucking scene if that's what it takes to get an answer. "Am I so worthless to you that ya can't even look me in the eye like a man? Just tell me why! That's all I want to know. Just tell me!"
"Ryan…" he says helplessly, looking at me with eyes wide and tragic as a lost puppy, one that doesn't make me feel anything than disgust because I can't believe him. "When your mother left…"
"When they sent her to the pen, dad, wouldja at least say that it happened? You walked out on me, left me living with a felon, a dealer. Say it happened."
"Would that change anything?" my father asks me, exhausted, broken.
"Maybe not. But I want to hear ya say it. I want ya t'know it happened," I say in a voice completely wiped out of emotion. My explosion took everything I had out of me, and now all I have is this outward emptiness. So many years of being nothing but cool have begun to take their toll, I guess, and now I can't shake it. Second nature. But inside I still know that nothing's the same. The feelings are so much stronger, and I still desperately need to hear him say something. Anything. There's no explanation for this, but I still need him to try. So I'll have something, anything, to accept or reject.
"When your mother was arrested," he concedes in that same broken-down stray dog voice that I get some vengeful, twisted satisfaction out of, "I had no idea that any of what the judge said was going on. I was living my own life, I was alone, I was working towards the kind of successful life that I'd always wanted. And then they told me that I had to be your father. I… I didn't know what to do. I was nervous. I was afraid."
Afraid. Of me? Of your thirteen-year-old son who you brought into this fucking world yourself, without giving him a shot to say whether he ever wanted to be born into a place like this? You've always been my father, whether you knew it or not. I'm going to punch him. I'm gonna do it. Somebody stop me, I just don't have the time to get fucking arrested today, I've still got things to do.
"And I know I didn't do it right, I know that. But I never wanted to have a child. Your mother was a mistake. We were only married for six months for a reason. I never should have let that happen, I lost control, and I was too afraid to deal with the consequences."
"So what you're saying is that I'm a mistake you're trying to forget about. Sorry to burst your bubble, daddy-o, but humans ain't like dreams. You push 'em away, they still gotta eat, they gotta sleep. We gotta go somewhere," I say as coldly as I can manage. I can hear the icicles dripping from every word, and I don't even have to put them on as a show. I mean every damn word I'm saying. "Sometimes ya make mistakes. God knows I've made my share. But you can't run away from the world. Ya gotta deal with 'em, 'afore they deal with you. Glad a Jet can teach a banker a little somethin' about the ways of life."
I stand up harshly, the scraping sound of my bar stool ringing through the largely silent room. Mitch looks up at me in mild, stupid curiosity over the edge of the new glass he's cleaning, then decides I'm not worth his time and goes right back to it. My father, on the other hand, stands up with me and puts a hand on my arm.
"Ryan, don't," he says urgently. "That's not why I wanted to see you today."
"Damn straight, because you didn't even want to see me," I snarl, "you ran into me and wouldn't'a been able to live with the guilt if you hadn't'a done somethin'. Don't kid yourself."
"No, I… you didn't give me a chance, I wanted to say…" he stammers.
I shake his hand off my arm like it's a poisonous spider and take two quick steps backwards, towards the door. "What? That you're sorry?" I sneer. "No you ain't. It happened now and you'd do the same goddamn thing, so don't waste your breath lying to me. You only sorry because you think you should be, not because you are. Can I live with you, pops? You want the Jet leader to move in and sleep on your couch for a few weeks?" I laugh disdainfully at the horrified expression that lasts for half a second on his face before he catches it. "Yeah, that's what I thought. I gave you enough chances. I gave you more chances than you gave me. I'm done."
"And I'm glad we had this talk," I add, standing in the doorway for the parting shot that's just dying to be said. "Now I don't have to wonder anymore. I can know for damn sure that I don't have to ever think or care about you for as long as I live. Have a nice rest of your life, pops. And fuck you."
Slam. The door bangs into its door frame as I stalk out onto Rector street, breathing like I'd run fifteen miles and not about one before I was interrupted. The damn voice in the back of my head keeps repeating something I'd said not long before, and I can't for the life of me find out how to shut it up.
"Ya can't run away from the world. Ya gotta deal with it."
Whatever's eating you, you let the world see it and you're dead. You lose control, even for a second, and you've lost. Have I lost, then? Why does it feel like I've lost and won at the same time? The tiniest bit of me is satisfied with this, that I've told him what he needed to hear and never have to think about him again, that I let out the rage and hate and revenge that's been soaking my insides for years. But the rest of me, most of it, is terrified of myself. What if I can never keep myself under control again? What if every time I feel something it has to work its way into my life, what if every time I'm mad or scared or confused the whole world knows it? What am I supposed to do then? You can't survive in the world I've made for myself if you wear your emotions like a badge. They have to believe you're unbreakable. I used to think I was unbreakable. Then I snapped. And now I don't know anymore.
"Ya can't run away from the world. Ya gotta deal with it."
You can't run away. You can't run away. And I'm not trying to. But I still need to run now, and I break out into a pace miles faster than my easy jog of a half an hour ago. A half hour? Long enough to shatter my peace of mind and flip my world upside down twice. My breath feels rough and cold in my lungs as I hit Broadway again and keep going north, farther than I'd planned, far past the park, deep into the dark and winding heart of Harlem. I'm not running from him. I can't possibly care any less about what he has to say. He doesn't know me, he's never known me, and he's never even tried to. I don't care. But I can't be around him right now, and I can't be anywhere my boys might find me, and I can't be anywhere I though I knew well, once, not really all that long ago. I have to get out of here.
But I'm not running away.
I don't think I can really talk about why I am running, then. I'm not running from anything, no one can hurt me more than they already have and feeling hurt has stopped, doesn't go down beyond a certain point. I'm not running to anything, I have nowhere to go and no one to meet once I get there except for myself, I'm a home on two legs that goes wherever my mind and my plans go. So why else would I feel this powerful need to run, to go nowhere and get there fast?
Is it nothing more than instinct?
You can't think and run at the same time. You can't feel and push the limits without one of the two suffering. Multitasking is the art of doing two things half-assed where one thing would take so much energy it would burn you up with hellfire.
Am I running only because I'm afraid to stop?
I wish I knew.