Title.

Andrew Benz

Autopilot

      I don’t know why I run.

      I know that some people run for pleasure.  Some, for their health.  Some, because it’s an easy way to meet cute girls on breath-freezingly cold autumn mornings that seem to crackle and crunch at a runner’s resolve in tandem with the brisk crunching of the frosty leaves under his feet, only to melt away into sunshine when the object of his recklessly early 7 AM pursuit returns a bright ponytail-bobbing smile.  Some people like running with their dogs.  Sometimes I’ll wonder, philosophically, if their dogs appreciate the favor of a chest-heavingly early sprint from a blanketed cradle into the cold snap of early fall, usually for the sake of being used as a prop in the amorous adventures of our aforementioned generic runner.  Especially if that dog happens to be a daschund, or pug, or some other small, squat-legged critter that was not built to break into an open gallop at seven in the morning through a frosty park.  Its eyes seem to wonder this as it chugs miserably along; I don’t want to be here.  He doesn’t want to be here.  Somehow, we got here. For what purpose?  We’re tired, cold, out of shape, pathetically dejected, miserably forlorn; why are we doing this?  I bemusedly consider the dog’s plaintive grunts and pants of objection, but the odd half-smile-half-grimace of bemusement leaves me abruptly when I remember that I have no idea why I’m running either.

      Anyway, it happens somehow.  I’ll just slide into some shoes and run aimlessly without even realizing what I’m doing.  How did I get out here?  Usually it doesn’t register until I get back to my house or car or dorm or whatever the case may be.  I’ll walk into a room and strike up a conversation and maybe see an acquaintance and start chatting animatedly at which point, oh hey, I’m wearing track shorts and track shoes and no shirt and I’m covered in sweat.  Spider-Man had a villain once (the name I can’t remember, but an educated guesser might propose that said villain made many villainous quips and wore spandex).  I’ve been feeling a certain bizarre sort of camaraderie lately with….well….whatever the name was.  He isn’t too unlike me, in the sense of mental absence.  This guy was an upstanding citizen who would go out on the town, almost sleepwalking, and do all sorts of things (most of them villainous and accompanied by both quips and spandex), only to return home and have no memory of what happened.  I’m like that, but with more of the running and less of the villainy. My suspicion is that this particular bad guy was in actuality an adaptation of the Jekyll/Hyde character, who was in turn based on the purported habits of some serial killers to go out, kill, return home, and not remember how their hands came to become bloody.  The alarming thought strikes me that I might, in fact, be embarking on murderous rampages every time I go running.  After all, aren’t Central Park‘s joggers always the ones who find the bodies first?  No, my mind assuages me, you’re just being completely insane...which only makes me shiver more.

      I walk back to my dorm.  I’m wearing jeans, so that means I must have been in class.  Check, says the political philosophy book in my backpack.  No track shoes, no muscle ache, only the sense of misplacement.  It’s Friday, which means that these hallowed halls have abandoned their erudition and are striving headlong into the real task of the semester: getting absolutely plastered.  A crowd of budding philosophy majors overenthusiastically greet me from their doorways, hooting red-facedly and inviting me in for some Dr. Pepper (nudge nudge wink wink).  This is the practical application of an esteemed academic’s lecture.  Hundreds of years of Hellenism and Athenian culture and democracy and republics and agoras and Socrates and Pythagoras and Aristotle and Co., all boiled down to an upside down Lambda or Omega on an upside down sweatshirt next to a keg stand.  “He who eats with most pleasure is he who requires least sauce,” claimed Xenophon, “but damn, bro, throw me another brewski!”  I embarrass myself with the door to the staircase for a second, push not pull, idiot, and rise past a mobile party on my way up to my floor as an upperclassman fumblingly maneuvers a battered air conditioner box through the hall, full of what must be three times the weight of any air conditioner (let alone the specialized kind of air conditioner that works only when the temperature hits 45 and keeps dropping and runs on Coors, as the faint odor insinuates).  Maybe the theory is to chug until you can’t tell if a room is too hot?

      I open the door to my room and exhaustedly drop everything mid-stride on the way to my bed. The amusing image of everyone’s favorite entrepreneurial upperclassman remains in my head in the sort of half-conscious manner favored by someone who might just have woken up from a long sleep, or maybe recovered from a cold.  It’s a fascinating image, I muse, as I absentmindedly kick my shoes off, probably because it’s something that seems so obvious and blatant, yet remains concealed. The CAs would all suspect what its purpose is if they took time to wonder, yet choose not to understand it because people never subject it to serious thought. What other purpose could an air conditioner box have?  Human nature is to blame, I assume. If there’s a box that says “air conditioner,” we presume that nothing but an air conditioner could ever reside in that box. One can’t really spend too much time analyzing such day-to-day items, or eventually that person would become paralyzed from inaction. It’s certainly an interesting thing to think about as I flip a light switch, open a drawer, drop my cell phone, throw on a running shoe, throw my bag on the bed, and sleepwalk through any number of other forgettable, miniscule chores. The last thought before my brain shuts off and I jog out the door is that my jeans have miraculously changed into running shorts.

      I don’t understand the need to become drunk.  I’m on lap #17 at this point, by the way.  Or maybe #18.  Might even be #16 for all I know.  I pretend to count the white markers as they flow beneath my feet, but really I just woke up.  A thought will creep into my head and gradually overcome all else until my vision is consumed by it, until I eventually come to with a start and find myself midway through a completely different task.  The first time I had such a displacement, I fell off a treadmill.  I’ve learned not to run on treadmills anymore.  I don’t lose my trains of thought; they abduct me.  The fastest train of them all is the one that commands me to abandon my possessions, friends, tasks, concerns, and agendas.  This train grabs me where I stand and leaves me with all the cognizance of a marionette.

      I’m sorry, let me make a second attempt.

       I don’t understand the need to become drunk.  It isn’t that I’m a health gonzo or a prude or allergic or timid or studious; I just missed a concept that my entire generation grasped with easy confidence.  I’ve struggled too much with the why while the rest of the dorm adopted a businessman’s veneer and an engineer’s edge and focused on the how.  How do we obtain it?  By establishing a massive network of shady retailers, of course.  From that point, how do we get it from A to B?  Water bottles, pillowcases, even air conditioner boxes.  Why are we getting it there?  

      Later that night, I talk to my friend Jake about the struggle between how and why.  Since the second day of orientation, he’s never had a problem with the how.  He understands the operation in its most intricate levels, knows every source, the pros and cons of every vehicle, and can quote fair market value on a brand-name scale.  He gets how.  Logically, he must also have some insight to share on why.

      I leap right into the conversation when I see him in the hall.  “Dude, why are you drunk?  It’s only Tuesday.”  He flashes a winning smile. “It’s thirsty Tuesday.”  

      “Why is Tuesday thirsty?”  This philosophical assault is met with hesitation for a split second, then another wide, red, friend-making grin. 

    “Dude, why wouldn’t Tuesday be thirsty!”  Okay, so he doesn’t really have any idea why he does it.  Fair enough.

      I don’t think there is any reason behind their why.  Actually, I doubt if they have a why at all.  Then again, does there need to be?  I’ve been running it through my head for a while now, and it makes more sense.  It’s not that I understand, it’s that I understand that I can’t understand.  I’m back in my room, I should mention that.  I don’t know how long I’ve been here.  But it gives me time to think about things in a forgotten, semi-conscious, sort-of-awake-sort-of-vacant-sort-of-shell-shocked sort of way.  Although I feel like I’m most absent from myself when I get hit by trains of thought like these, I’m really at my best.  These bizarre, introspective searches for understanding that constantly travel in a circular path around my head never really lead to anything concrete, but the process gives me comfort.  

      You can’t “learn” drinking.  I can’t, anyway, no matter how hard I try.  It’s something that simply comes automatically, like breathing or sleeping or running.  It’s not so much a calculated plan to gain any sort of experience or social advantage, it just happens to be that someone enters a room with beer in it, a can is presented, and what else is there to do?  It isn’t a pressure from peers, it’s an internal imperative.  It’s sort of the same way the presence of an air conditioner box commands the presence of an air conditioner in a rational person’s mind.  Sometimes your mind fills in the blanks for you when your own answer doesn’t fit, I guess.  Honestly, I have no idea.  I think that being able to realize this as I sit up in bed, pondering things, is a step in the right direction. 

      Which direction is that? 

      I have no idea.

      And why am I wearing track shorts?