In my body there was a strong urge to run, destination unimportant, just away.

I get sad when I sit too long indoors without movement or sun.

This is the way of war, too: what writer Tim O’Brien calls “boredom with a twist, the kind of boredom that caused stomach disorders . . . you’d feel the boredom dripping inside you like a leaky faucet, except it wasn’t water, it was a sort of acid, and with each little droplet you’d feel the stuff eating away at important organs.”

I needed to cleanse myself of all this resentment.

I loved those things, once, each and all of them, until they turned on me, like they all did, like they all do.

When I ran, I wanted freedom from the relentless decision tree of contemporary American life. The exercise soothed me into a creature closer to the animal I so often forget I am: mentally calm and physically alert, present in my body rather than my mind.

I hate cleaning but I cannot relax in an unclean space.

I felt less driven than pulled, as if I had stopped paddling and just drifted, arriving back at an oddly familiar place.