Running / Machine

"I'm not a human. I'm a piece of machinery. I don't need to feel a thing. Just forge on ahead. I repeat this like a mantra. A literal, mechanical repetition. And I try hard to reduce the perceptible world to the narrowest parameters. All I can see is the ground three yards ahead, nothing beyond. My whole world consists of the ground three yards ahead. No need to think beyond that. The sky and wind, the grass, the cows munching the grass, the spectators, cheers, lake, novels, reality, the past, memory -- these mean nothing to me. Just getting me past the next three yards -- this was my tiny reason for living as a human. No, I'm sorry -- as a machine."

From Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Proving the machine metaphors may still be sometimes deeply meaningful. The short book is Murakami's monograph on marathons and the work of training for them.