The gym track is on the third floor, but the middle and edges are open, so I can see the floors below: the second floor with the cafe and reception desk, the first floor with the machines and the basketball court. I watch them play as I run.
Around the edge of the track is a metal railing about waist high. It has a smooth thin top rail and it’s painted the color of cheap butter. Because walkers are supposed to take the two inside lanes, I don’t run near it.
Kundera says, “The fear of falling isn’t a fear of falling, but a desire to, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.” I feel the pull during my whole run. The top of the fence is low enough; it would be so easy; three floors below onto the hard basketball court. It could be quick, maybe painless.
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But more than the landing, I think of the falling, the Alice in Wonderland moment I dream of, long for and dread. Not weightless exactly, because I am falling, but nothing below me holds me up. I imagine this every time I see a fence on a bridge or the edge of a building. The fall would be better than Alice’s though: hers was down a dark tunnel, she couldn’t see where she was or where she was going. For me, it’s always in the bright daylight in a wide open space. If I can avoid it, I never approach the edge; like Odyssues tied down as he passes the sirens, I want to be restrained.
Beauty lives on the edges: the jagged edge of the iris, the curve of a bent knee, the last note when the chickadee sings, chick-a-dee- dee-dee. It’s the first moment your lips touch your lover’s lips and it the split second before you break apart. The first and then last word of a book. We know this world because of the edges and the pull to approach them, to run our hands across them, to lean over, farther and farther; this is our deepest curiosity looking for more: what if this? what if that? what if now?
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