Love + Hate Read Online Free PDF

just under the surface, the bitter debris of love, and a tribute to liberation.
    Holding tight onto the handrail for fear of plunging down headfirst, he reached the bottom of the steps onthe other side and turned, with a madly confident kick of speed, onto the street. After another hundred yards he took a breather. He had to.
    It would be a lengthy final stretch now, along the avenue of loss, with the tree-lined river on one side and the reservoir on the other. Further along this path, if he didn’t have a heart attack, he would find his wife collapsed and whimpering, or perhaps even vomiting, with only sufficient energy to claw at his ankles, pleading. Not that he’d stop. He’d leap over her, maybe giving her a little accidental kick in the head, before firing on to victory.
    After slogging up and down those steps, he knew he was tiring, or else could die. He’d had enough of this run, and required all his reserve power. Where was it? He tied and retied his shoes and then ran on the spot, afraid of stopping, as he contemplated the wet vista of mud, trees and clouds ahead of him. And all the while his mind whirled and turned, counting his losses, until the search for suffering came to a stop. He’d had a better idea. He took a step.
    Instead of following her, instead of perhaps catching up with her at last, he turned and faced the other way. He took another step. He took several steps, a little off balance, as if he’d never walked before. He was away. Going in the other direction.
    Like Zeno’s arrow, shot through the air forever, he would never get there. He would get somewhere else.Weren’t there other places but here? He would be a missing person. Sometimes you had to have the courage of your disillusionments. No more the S&M clinch, the waltz of death. Ruthlessness was an art. He regretted everything, but not this.
    The sky was darkening, yet he felt a new propulsive energy, formless and uncompetitive. Run, run, run, said all the pop songs he’d grown up on. He would take that advice, while never forgetting that anyone who is running from something is running towards something else.

I Am the Future Boy
    I say to my youngest son, please, let’s run together this afternoon. Sitting down exhausts me; some movement would do me good, we will feel the better for it – just twice around the Green, no more than fifteen or twenty minutes. I want to add: I’m losing strength, and boredom is worse as you get older. Mixed with sadness and regret, it seems heavier and more final; sometimes even music doesn’t temper it. I wonder if a jog might dislodge some of my gloom.
    For him this is a cue for sighing. It will be an effort; he will have to rise from the sofa and even leave the house. This short run could also be – this is his fear – an opportunity for me to lecture him on philosophical or psychological matters, or worse, politeness, sex or tidying up the house. Often he regrets that I exist at all, and that he has to deal with me.
    But, miraculously, and to my surprise, he agrees.
    We have done this before, and sometimes, as I trot along, he walks or even strolls beside me, rather patronisingly, in my view. But today, to equalise things, to make them more of an exertion and challenge, since I am soslow for this quick fifteen-year-old, he decides to strap on his ankle weights. They are heavy, pull at the muscles of the legs and cramp the ankles. For me, to wear such things would be like trying to cook while being crucified, but he has heard that this is how Cristiano Ronaldo practises step-overs.
    Now, today, as we jog easily along the perimeter of the Green, I decide to give the little shit a shock, by kicking off a bit, insofar as I can. So I go a bit faster, and feel him fall behind me. I still have it, I think. I will sprint home in triumph, showing him who is boss.
    In India, according to family legend, my father had been an excellent cricketer, boxer and squash player. I’d always run with him in our local