posted
The OCD theme introduced in Xenocide, with Qing Jao and the God-Spoken on Path, fascinated me. It was a theme I'd never seen used in a novel, and provided a dramatic and compelling counterpoint to Ender's and Valentine's supremely intuitive/rational/humanistic openness.
But I have hardly any personal experience with OCD, and I can't say that I grokked the God-Spoken... until today.
I commute daily from my town -- an inner suburb of Boston -- to my office about four towns away, a motorcylce ride or drive of about eight miles. I usually take local streets -- it's a fairly scenic route, the traffic's not bad, and there are few stop lights.
Every morning -- and I mean EVERY morning -- I pass a man coming the other way, running along the edge of the road.
Because his practice is so regular, and mine is less so, I have passed him at many different points on his route, including his arrival at what is apparently his destination, the central square in my town. (Where he starts I am not sure -- based on the most distant point at which I've passed him, his daily route must be at least three miles each way.)
He is not running for exercise. As far as I can tell it is his mode of travel. Perhaps he is commuting. I have no idea if he works.
He wears street clothes, including big clodhopper boots. His outfit varies little through the seasons -- maybe a slicker when it's raining, or a heavier jacket in the snow.
He carries a pack -- a sack -- of some sort. Sometimes tucked under one arm like a football.
What really stands out, besides his regularity, is his gait and demeanor. His "run" is a bounding, straining lope. His cumbersome boots clap down on the pavement in a slow but inexorable rhythm. His facial features are sometimes twisted into a sweaty grimace, but at the very least his eyes are distantly and intensely focused. Until the other day I had never seen him acknowledge anything in his surroundings, nor any exchange or recognition between him and the commuters on my side of the road (and I can only assume that other regulars on this route are as familiar with him as I).
Sometimes he runs holding his gunny-sack over his head, in one or both hands. I'd think it was a more rigorous variation of an exercise routine but for his air of inner triumph. And when he arrives at the central square, he does a victory lap, arms held high, sweat dripping off his chin, his mouth split into a wide grin.
Every day.
Every day.
And yesterday, some thoughts I'd been idly gathering over the months coalesced.
- Who is he? What kind of compulsion is that? Does he have an ailment? - What must it take to perform that feat? He must be in extraordinary physical condition. - It doesn't seem like he cares about his physical condition. There is something else going on here. - I should wave to him. I should say hi. (Finally yesterday I did.) - HE IS PERFECT. This idea hit me in the solar plexus. His reliability, his utterly irrational reliability -- almost certainly imposed by an aberrant compulsion of some kind -- is literally godlike.
Suddenly, the scenes of tracing floorboard wood-grain came flooding back to my mind. It's very hard to put into words exactly what it is I think I have grokked.
Maybe it has something to do with the rest of us, mostly, living in an aberrant world of another type -- an ADD-ish world. I don't finish projects. I'm late to appointments. I forget birthdays. I procrastinate at work and at home (vis., ahem, this post ).
I sort of envy him.
(edit: typo)
[ October 08, 2004, 03:49 PM: Message edited by: John Van Pelt ]
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posted
Well written and nice reading, but I'm not sure, as you acknowledge, too, that we can assume his external behavior is because of OCD or an ailment.
Your guy sounds like a brand of person that I see quite often around college towns, sometimes seen on one of those horizontal bike thingies.
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Maybe I will get chance to find out. Or make a chance. Not out of morbid curiosity -- I don't know, I imagine most people would consider his behavior at least a little strange (stranger than riding a recumbent bicycle), and maybe even scary. Maybe he doesn't have many friends.
On the other hand, he could be a hugely popular sensei at the local dojo and just chooses this way to arrive pumped up.
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