and then you get back.
and there's that hill leading up to the subway. and the steps--steps, everywhere! and you walk from here to there and from there to here and on and on (all with a heavy bag {bags}). and the heavy doors--the pulling and the pushing.
and suddenly you remember.
and suddenly the body feels the strain.
and a type of exhaustion takes hold, unique to this city.
but the exhaustion will pass.
and i will be back in fighting form in no time.
i had forgotten how the whole of the city conspires to whip one into shape.
but my blistered feet and strained calves, well they certainly remember now.
5 comments:
this reminds me of when i spent a day lugging my suitcase around the city and then the wheel broke.
a serious whipping into shape occurred there.
oh man.
new york was the most exhausting vacation i've ever been on. walking. walking. caring. and pushing luggage.
i honestly couldn't walk after we pounded the pavement for three days straight.
The same thing used to happen to me in high school- the first week back, carrying my backpack weighed down with textbooks, I always wondered how I'd done it before. But then I got used to it, my back got stronger, and I would forget that I'd ever had a problem.
Funny how you forget, isn't it?
the same thing happens to me when i come back to CH after summer at home. oh the hills! the huge, winding, only-way-to-get-to-class hills!
ny does it too- but differently. there it's more of the exhaustion of being away from the house all day (and usually, of being in an office or running to meetings). i always have to adjust to being around so many people! and somehow, it always hurts my feet more than walking the swiss mountains ever does!
Somehow you always manage to capture exact fragments of my mood. I have not returned to a place in physicality and the toll I am taking is not on my body but my mind as I throw myself into literature and resume my degree. I like coming to your blog to hear your words of beauty so I am grateful, and lucky, for that.
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