Running Toward
Reflections on pink sunset, fire sky, and questions for the week ahead
Like the bright pulse of the sunset, I surprised myself with a quick pace.
It’s a Monday night when a desire to go fast emerges. I’d left my apartment thinking what I needed was a slow, winding walk and instead I unearthed a budding quickness — feet moving fast against the concrete. Maybe it’s spring coming, I wonder, maybe it’s winter leaving and the snow melting off, maybe it’s grief or anxiety or joy or all of of the above, maybe it’s not. I am letting go of the story, instead leaning into the feeling, listening to the need. The need says run, and so I go, diving into this fast pace.
With writing I learn to sense, be with, and track. Writing deepens my instinct. This pace of quickness seems to emerge when I am cycling through something — hormones, emotions, vestiges of stories lingering embodied from weeks, months, or years, even. In learning to listen to life, to the life humming in my body, to the creative tendrils that drip like ideas on some days and hum like a river on others, I’ve moved away from running in recent years. I tend, already, to live with a quick mind, and walking and writing are my counterweights: they are the processes that remind me to take a beat, to breathe and pause, to breathe and be with, to be with instead of avoiding. Running as a way of shaking off and running toward, as a way of moving toward desires, aims, ideas, movement as a method for feeling weaving its way through this body, heart, mind, instead of getting stuck. It arrives occasionally, and I am learning to listen.
That night, I think of the pink sky I arrived to, awestruck, the weekend before, the way the sun arrived in an instant, like pigment unfurling onto a wet page, instant infinite color arranging and staining. Bright orange sky with purple at its edges. Hot pink yellow mixed with orange. Earlier I sat with the gray day writing page after page after page in an heirloom journal voraciously, being with thoughts, curiously, noticing the past and the present, noticing my tendencies towards harshness, softening body into couch as if the ink left on the ten pages I filled were a release valve, an exhale, a kettle boil, a good friend, a slow walk, a long run, steam releasing. The process of letting go.
I feel plugged in, later, in the evening aiming toward the sun. My feet are humming across the street. I listen to my body and it says faster. Keep going. Part of me wants to stop — it would be easier, I think, to slow down — but I am learning to encourage myself, learning to encourage staying with the feeling instead of diving into emotional escape, learning, too, to run into the direction of my needs, desires, aims. This dedication. This encouragement. This strength. This writing. This feels important.
I keep running and dive into pacing. I tune into memory of days before: I remember the shock of red, orange, fire sky and I realize I am running because I want the sun, desiring to find the place where it emerges along the skyline. Time is the ingredient, an intention mixed with quickness, and I know if I run I will catch a glimpse of what I care about: this warmth, this ending day, this bright earth, this shock of red, of sunlight pink, of orange. This colorfield I pair with optimism in the distance.
I run and trace a line across the city. Fast body trails invisible imprints of this desire for the sunlight along pathways that no one will ever see, passing buildings, numbered street signs, stop lights, instinct high moving quick between these rush hour streets. Quickness and safety, aiming into the pink sky, the full moon, a day edging into the evening, running fast past piles of trash on the sidewalks, passing pink lights from red bulbs at construction sites, pink rising to cheeks as blood pumps, breath fast, and I remember what I am aiming toward.
This is intention — the guiding force. Figs hang dead and dried on the edges of branches overhead, vestiges of the last season; I keep running. I surprise myself with the pace, but then again, remember how I thrive at times on surprises, sustained in the awe in the face of the sunlight, for example, always and often the sunlight, grateful for the spaciousness of the environment, diving in arms first, feet sturdy into the unknown as much as the “what if” scares me, as much as the opportunity for delight, as much as dedication to, and joy of, the opportunity arises. In these moment to run toward the setting sun. I set out to walk, slow, steady, and instead I meet myself with the run, and I am humming.
Don’t miss this sunset, I think.
We run toward our dreams. We find the current of our ideas and channel our ideas to life. The thought, the aim, the desires, the guides — we find them inside of ourselves and the ecologies of belonging we are tethered to and planted into. Our creativities are conversations between ourselves, between each other and our environments, between our stories and each other and time and the gravity of being here, and our connections to the earth. This moment is our material. We do the best with what we have, what we can. We move fast, sometimes, in and other times, move slow.
In the end, I do miss most of the red sky, but what’s revealed, instead, is the process. I arrive to the edges of the river when the evening arrives, where the stones have turned black, when the clouds are erased marks against a city of metal dark like graphite and ink. I have released something along the way: a thought, a thread, a feeling, a constriction. I have moved and shaken loose. I feel lighter, limber, breathing, and tender instead of sullen and hard by the time I touch the contours of city. I feel grateful for the sand and this landing place.
Pink hints meet the metal stretching skyward off in the distance, against the black night arriving. I imprint these feelings, that song from the water, surrender from the morning’s writing, together with these visions and the sun as aims and guiding signals. Earth and body feeling the pulse — tuning in. The water teaches me to keep going. The desire to run, this love of sunset, lessons in persistence. The sunlight a magnet. The river, dark and constant, a reminder of returning as it washes itself again and again over moss covered black rocks, tides moving in and out pulling at soft earth. Something softens in me, too, and I am grounding. Glitter city stark standing tall, glowing there, steady skyline against the pink distance.
If you’re looking for a guiding question for your pages, this week, try these: What are you loving, aiming towards, curious about, walking up to, or running toward? What are you standing in awe of? What feelings are you finding, and can you collaborate with them? What could these messengers say? What can you release into the ground, into the water, along with the moon? What colors are calling you? Together with the earth, what are we creating?
classes and upcoming experiences:
Join in for creative practices with me in NYC
3/3 Suminagashi Basics
3/10 Bookbinding: Pamphlet Stitch
3/10 Suminagashi Cards
3/14 Grounded in Gratitude
3/17 Build Your Journaling Practice
3/17 Bookbinding: Casing In Hardcovers
3/20 Taste + Write: Meditating on the Senses
nourished by, nourishing:
Reading Drifts by Kate Zambreno (more on Bookshop), cooking carrots and roasted chicken, grateful for skylines, friend visits, and nervine herbs like lemon balm and mimosa.
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from a past season:
studio views:
Creative Nourishment is a reader-supported publication by Kelly Odette Laughlin. I’m an artist, writer, and teacher located in NYC, and the founder of Odette Press. I lead creative workshops throughout the city and beyond. Let’s work together. Learn more about my work here, shop journals here, and reply to connect.