I had just fallen asleep one night at #228 west 33rd, exactly in the position where I had been reading a few moments earlier - face down on the bed with my feet hanging over the edge, lights and the now silent CD player still on.

In sleep, my door opened. I heard her drop her heavy bag on the floor, a sound I knew very well, accompanied by a feeling in my whole body... alertness... ecstasy.

I was still asleep.

"Are you sleeping?" M. said, half laughing, "It's so early."

She walked across the room and over to me, beside my head. "I bet your surprised it's me," she continued, laughing as she rubbed my sleepy head. "Hey, I brought you a gift."

"No you didn't!" I said, with only half-mocking doubt. Or at least I thought that's what I said, because I was still sleeping. No words came out of my mouth.

I struggled to wake up, the way I'm sure everyone sometimes does. While I was doing this I felt a strange tickling in my toe. It was her little puppy, the one that she had once brought over to spend the night, and now she had brought it over once again. M. is full of surprises.

That now long ago night, I imagined her puppy was a little baby wolf. That's what it looked like, any ways. While it licked my toe, it helped me to struggle out of my dream.

I should never have struggled to awake from that dream, as should you never-ever struggle to wake from yours. For in struggling, I succeeded in waking. In waking there was no M. - no little puppy, no heavy bag full of things never known.

'Shit,' I thought 'Now I'll never know what that gift was.' Instead there was just the silence and the lights and the sense of night - a dimly lit world stretching beyond - on and on and on.

Still, my toe tickled... the way it had in my dream. And it felt as if that little dog was still kissing it, not just licking it, but kissing it, in the way that a pet owner's enthusiasm bleeds over into the action of their pets. Alone I felt the longing torment of both a terrible fullness and wonderful emptiness.

M. did something, once, which might be considered cruel. She took me on a six mile run around two lakes in Minneapolis. The run was quite easy for her, especially at my pace. It nearly killed me.

Maybe I just hoped it would. Maybe it would have been better. It was about one third of the way through our run together that I first had the thought that I was going to die - that this would kill or, at least seriously injure me. I don't think about the sweet sleep of death too much anymore.

I was certain I would have to quit, it was so pointless. The night pressed in around me -a hot empty night- taking my precious breath, teasing me with the denial of it's life giving essence.

I slowed to a fast walk. M. actually began to run circles around me. In desperation, I started running again. M. sipped in the beautiful scents of the trees, commenting on their qualities, qualities which had escaped me,

'Why am I doing this?'

Life is discriminatingly cruel. It gives to some in abundance, but from most it withholds.We were now at halfway, the most dangerous part in any adventure. Just then, words from the movie Dune: sounded out in my mind's voice.

"Fear is the mind killer."

I repeated these words in my head. In repeating these words I somehow found the strength to not only continue, but to gain speed. We neared what I thought was our goal, the end. It seems sad all goals are merely ends, finish lines .

"Is this it?" I asked her, about the stoplight which was the end of our run-around.

"No, it's the next one, it's only about five minutes more," she said, laughing a little.

She ran way faster than I ever ran myself, but at this point -after her words, from her tone- I knew that no excuses would be allowed. If I was unable to complete this run, I would never see M. again, that she would withdraw from me in disgust. By my will alone I would not let this happen.

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

'Fear is the mind killer,' these words I silently repeated and repeated and repeated... when finally we were done. With me dragging it took us over an hour.

For the remainder of that entire night I felt an incredible elation -a euphoria. From this place, -this empty present moment- I can dismiss it as a biological reaction to that amount of exertion. But that one night meant something to me.

I remember that we drove for a while, -meaningless wandering driving of the kind that I now associate with M.- then we walked to the base of a waterfall in a park in Minneapolis.

M. was wearing her sweatshirt inside out -soft part out. Mostly M. keeps her soft parts in, hidden ... protected.

I was reminded of that little girl M. - M. when I had first met her so many forgotten years earlier. That's what I thought of her as back then, though even at that time I knew that she was a beautiful young woman. But I wouldn't let myself think of her that way, not then.

Things were different now.

That night I kissed M..

I kept my eyes open as I did, looking at her many faces, how they changed as I moved closer to her. I watched her change from Caucasian to Asian to just eyes; close closed eyes drinking pleasure.

The hint of mist drifted by often in that place, reawakening us in the tired summer's air.

For a while I didn't see M.; not that I didn't want to. I wanted to call her all the time, to be with every day, to wake up to face her; to kiss her hair and to smell her scent as she dreamed.

M. had every guy in the world calling her twenty times a day. My ego wouldn't let me be that for her. I wanted to be different than all the other guys. And though I failed, most of all I wanted to give her freedom; the terrible kind of absolute freedom that means being willing to lose not just a little, but a lot... to lose it all - to lose everything you've ever worked for, or cared about!

So I kept on trying to run that distance and kept on failing. Yet each time I ran, I felt like it was bringing me closer to her.

I waited for her to call. I am always waiting for M.. As the day of her leaving drew nearer, she called me. We ran together, once again.

M. is fast.

Afterwards I asked her, "How fast do you usually do it?"

"Oh, I usually do it in about 45-50 minutes. The way you're going you'll probably be running it faster than me before I leave," she told me.

"Faster than fifty minutes?"

"I wouldn't be surprised." she said... or she said something like that. It's tough for me to remember all the things that M. said.

I only remember the meaning of all her words; and more so, the meaning of her actions. I would do that run in fifty minutes before M. would leave me. That's what it meant... fifty minutes... before we would leave each other.

Alone I ran, routinely now. And at least now I finished the circuit without stopping or walking, or cheating I some other way.

By the time that M. had left me for good, left me almost without a word and absolutely without a trace, I had been able to complete the run in about 55 to 57 minutes.

I remember the feeling of having M. leave me. I said good-bye to her through the window of her car. She said she would call me with her new number. Then, I turned, and walked towards the front door of #228.

It was right then that I felt her leave me, though I tried to deny it then. It was as if something had been ripped out of me and returned to her from between my shoulder blades. I was breathless, cringing.

'Trust M.,' I told myself as my foot hit the first step up to the door. 'You have to trust that she knows what she's doing.'

And she did.

M. is no more cruel, really, than the world itself. It was I who had lain my feelings down in the middle of the road.

Sometimes... even now... I see a car that looks like M.'s and my heart jumps.

I cannot find M. anywhere; not in the world of body, or of spirit. I've searched intensely in both.

Still I continue to run, the same route exactly as she had shown it to me, not towards anything... or away from anything... it's become a form of worship - towards M. - the M. that, as I continue to run, I become more and more certain I will never see again, the M. that, as time passes, I become less and less certain ever even existed. Only while I am running do I feel that I am somehow with her.

You must remember, never ever struggle to awake from a dream. A few weeks before this dream of mine, I had broken my toe. I didn't personally break it; but it was broken while in my custody so I couldn't help feeling somewhat responsible.

A physiological explanation exists for the tingling both in my dream and after I awoke. My toe was healing.

It felt warm. It felt good for the first time in awhile. There is a physiological explanation for almost everything, even sleepless nights.

But not really for broken hearts.

There is no simple explanation what happens in the mind, no explanation for what lingers in my mind about that puppy's love, no explanation for a warmth towards which I can find no way to return. After waking, an idea washed over me. Somehow, I suddenly knew that I could complete that run in less than 50 minutes.

Amidst and outside of that dream, everything about me was hurting. But more, it really hurt like hell to run with a broken toe. So much so that I couldn't do it everyday. Now I finally knew it was healing.

That was M.'s gift -what that puppy's licking enthusiasm meant. I don't know what you would call a gift like that: a gift of power? A gift of knowledge? These are the only things that matter to me now, knowledge - and power.

Originally I thought that by running, by will alone, I could keep M. from leaving me. Now I ran to allow M. to leave me, not just physically, for she is already gone, but so that she could leave my heart and my head.

All the other junk that M. had given me, the things that I had been saving, I could give back to her, if I could ever see her again. (I should probably just throw all that shit away.)

This one thing, though, she taught me. More than just how to run six miles, she taught me how to face annihilation, and meaninglessness; to move towards both with your own will, and to conquer the fear that accompanies the arrival of these two deadly horsemen by the completion of an impossible act, a gesture which itself has no more meaning, or hope of succeeding, than of preventing a tree from falling of old age, or an acorn from falling into the fertile soil. For fall they both must. Yet for now, one lives on, and another -a new and strong and lasting love- has yet to be born.

I wish that M. had believed me when I said that I loved her. I wish that now, I could give you her voice. Instead I have only the words of love and loss found in the songs on the CD that she accidentally left with me - sweet, solemn and sad -words that I imagine are her thoughts, but words I know now she never really meant for me.

Today I completed that run in 48 or 49 minutes. I didn't want to do it. I hated to do it. But it was an agreement. I never should have agreed to let her leave.

Bitter fall, cold and windy; but otherwise beautiful... a sunny afternoon, strong with shadows; today, by our unspoken agreement, I am leaving M.. And I wonder, at the end of it all whether, maybe, M. could feel me leaving?

But then I thought to myself, "M. doesn't believe in that kind of magic, and neither do you really - and all that other stuff... you either made it up or you were dreaming,"

Though in saying so, I remembered, once again, that you should never, ever struggle to awake from a dream.

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