Jenny Sadre-Orafai: The Matrix MX-T3

The Matrix MX-T3 doesn’t belong to me. And, although there are three in this small space, I only run on the middle one. I suppose I’m superstitious like that. However, it’s not the slickest treadmill in the apartment complex gym.

I’m disciplined in some areas of my life, especially running. I run 7.5 miles every single day. I’m not so disciplined when it comes to writing. Although I’ve been a writer much longer than I’ve been a runner, I’ve never been good at sticking to any sort of writing schedule. This was before I combined the two.

I don’t come to the treadmill with a pen and paper and casually walk. No, I bring my Blackberry and I run. Only when I have an idea that I know I’ll forget do I reach for the lip of the treadmill. It’s a graceful fumble. I know it’s not the smartest of places to use a phone and I’m sure I look like I’m punching in the most important text of my life. Sometimes I even think my fellow gym-goers place bets on me falling. It hasn’t happened yet.

I type drafts of e-mails and save them onto the phone. These e-mails that never get sent are typically snippets of larger pieces of what I want to say. It should be noted that I write incomplete sentences and misspell quite a few of the few words that do make it out. Sometimes the fragments make little sense, the words all jumbled.

Here’s the eye of the storm: he robs her of men.

Some element (personal) foreign in all.

What you get in this short life together

What’s ours for now

For the taking

Keep driving until you hear my voice

I’m only able to write here in the gym because of what I listen to when I run. Let’s just say I would be more than embarrassed if anyone ever scrolled through my running playlists. The songs are pure sugar and lack any sustenance. But, the beats and the bass? They make my feet go. Sometimes I listen to the music so loudly that I can hardly hear my shoes hit the belt. It’s best this way. And, since I’ve listened to these songs so many times, they’re truly just sound. I can turn off the writer in my head that listens for lyrics, makes meaning, like when I listen to Bjork or Jolie Holland.

I can’t tell you what it is that gets me to write when I run. It’s there though. It’s on the treadmill that essay ideas start to form, a first line to a poem, a title to a poem I wrote the day before on the run before. While I know plenty of people see their run (whether outside or inside) as an escape from every thought and worry, I see my run as time to really think about what I want to say. I’d be lying if I said I don’t like the urgency of what I want to say, what I need to say, as I’m trying to keep my pace.

It’s not that I don’t have the obvious places to write. I have a desk at my home office and at my office office. A computer lives on each of these desks. You’ll still find me writing the most when I’m running on the treadmill that doesn’t belong to me while listening to bad music.

I have tried other combinations though. I’ve downloaded podcasts from literary journals and magazines that I enjoy and even a lecture or two. I listened to these podcasts and lectures only to be too crowded with the speaker’s words to have my own thoughts going.

Of course it’s logical to get my own treadmill in hopes of writing even more. That’s faulty reasoning though. When I come to this dinky gym that my apartment seems to pride itself on as they parade potential renters by, I’m stripped of all my things, all the distractions—stacks of books and magazines, my dog whimpering in her sleep, the glowing television, the internet. There’s not room for them here.

Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s essay “Hooking, Toprolling, and Pressing, or What It’s Like When I’m in Love” will appear in LAR Issue 10, October 2011.