Here's something to check off my to-do list:

Tonight I went for a walk barefoot in the Halloween rain. At first I just stood there, and let the icy pin-pricks of the rain pepper my face and legs. Then I ran back upstairs and got Coleridge. What better way to read a Romantic, I thought to myself, than by the crinkled yellow light of a street lamp in a snow-drop cold rain? When I returned, though, it was raining harder. The rain dimpled the pages of my book, lifting the paper into little smile-wrinkles. I sketched a few short lines into my mind, but it wasn't enough and I wasn't willing to ruin the book, so I put it away, turned left, and started walking. I say, if you can't read the Romantics, live the Romantics.

So, wandering down the street in front of our apartment, I mused melancholy on the dark night, lit gaudily by street, stop, car and house lights. The dark pools of water settling into the middle of the street seemed an ample metaphor for the emotions of my heart. But something odd happened to me tonight: despite my best efforts, melancholy couldn't set in. Instead, to keep warm in the deluge I had to hurry on my way. If I took quick steps, walking briskly, I would warm up, and as my body warmed, my heart and mind warmed as well, gently nudging me involuntarily into a light heart. Soon I was dashing the dark puddles, spreading glittering drops of water across the sheening surface of the street, each reflecting the many lights that belong to a cloudy city night.

As I approached campus, my destination, I stopped and turned around. It was cold, I thought, and this experience, as marvelous as it could be, is not worth catching my death of cold. So I started down the side street that runs behind Tropicana, avoiding a few rushing cars, illuminating the flutter of a thousand drops in the beams of their headlights, each headlight a tiny meteorshower captured for a moment, then gone. The street became dark and empty; as I was crossing the lane, and as I reached the center, I turned, and gazed straight up the middle of it. It enticed me, drew me, unexplainably. Perhaps that's how the spawning salmon feels, facing the rushing current with mighty strokes of his tail. I can't really speak for him, but as for me, I turned up the middle of the street and started running. I threw my head back, let my bare feet thud a quick rhythm on the black asphalt, and inhaled dewy drops of rain, steeped in sweet poesy. My hair, soaked in the wine, lifted from my forehead, and streamed behind me as I grinned a foolish gaping smile and let myself go. Each step was exhilirating, mixed pain and pleasure, water splashing all around my feet, water stinging my face in a tatoo rythm, increasing as I gained speed. It was a moment of pure youthfulness, Peter Pan taking off from amongst the Lost Boys, swooping wildly through forest and glade, bent on the rescue of an Indian Princess.

The problem with running is that it gets you where you're going faster than when you walk. In a minute I was home, warm, and wet. My face was plastered with water, my heart beating warmly in my chest, as I burst open the door of my apartment. I put on water for hot chocolate, opened Coleridge, and read some empty poetry for a few minutes. And I realized that it was over. I couldn't go back outside again. All these kinds of ecstatic experiences end.

It's funny how running can be such a childlike thing. Childhood is a time of more energy, enthusiasm, and innocence than we have now. When we run for no reason, or for no apparent reason, we revisit the times when we always ran, attempting to outpace our peers in a mad dash to nowhere.