Too Much Julian May

Reading too much pulp scifi can be dangerous to your sanity. I’ve realized I’ve started to think in effusive prose and excessive 3rd person!

As she sits at her computer; that culmination of science, technology and design so perfected at the entry to the 21st century (humanity’s salvation or its ruin?); she tries to marshal her swirling and chaotic thoughts. The triathlete, shoulders and hamstrings pinging with exhaustion and strain yet still game for one more workout, tries to rid her mind of the hyperbolic and adverb heavy prose of 1980’s era pulp fiction. She attempts to write a sentence not weighted down with ridiculous metaphor or simile, smothering her thoughts like an unexpected late spring snowfall burdening a delicate lilac bush.

She has only just begun her arduous year of training, her quest towards that athletic ideal and pinnacle of physical achievement – Ironman. The first month is always the hardest, exhaustion and pain settling into muscle, brain and nerve like pigeons in a stately historic building – unwanted but unavoidable. She knows, she knows deep in heart and to the very fibre of her being that if she perseveres, perseveres and does not let this stop her that the pain and exhaustion will fade and she can glory in the joy of training, finely tuning her muscles and honing her psyche for the unimaginable quest she has chosen, heading toward the ecstasy and glory of completion.

Her bicycle, black and yellow, sits in her closet unused but impatient, like a wasp forced into idleness, abuzz with internal tension. Although inanimate, it almost vibrates in anticipation of the morrow’s ride and the season ahead. Hills! Backroads! Scenic vistas! So much distance just waiting to be ridden and explored after so very many months, long months of idleness and unuse. It could once again exult in its ultimate purpose, ecstasies of glory in the simple perfection of balance, speed and centrifugal force.

The triathlete is content in her tiredness, her cocoon of exhaustion. She knows that in a few weeks she will be ready for the program and exulting in her physical reshaping. She also knows that if she reads a couple of Cormack McCarthy novels, with their spare and minimalist style, stark like a winter birch in the frigid north, that she will free herself of this obnoxious yet strangely addictive style of prose.