(Ah, right. I could do a search, but maybe later.)

"I just like sound of hip-hop," Phelps says.

"I love Jay-Z and 50 Cent and I'm a huge Biggie (Smalls) fan. I listen to rap on way to practice and whatever I've been playing just loops through my head as I swim."

And his daily workout lasts two-and-a-half hours and covers ten miles.

Fortunately, I suspect that audio art forms besides hip-hop (or, perhaps, an actual form of music), played on internal audio system will also occupy conscious mind and unleash power of unconscious.

So, whenever you have to engage body for an extended period, play your own internal music.

Fortunately, success is issue and there’s no accounting for taste.

Soon, I picked up another clue. My nose began to sense subtle smells of river, slightly musty, but clean and fresh at same time. Although I still could see nothing, I was even more certain that I was on target.

I kept walking toward that place all my senses told me was straight ahead, even though I couldn’t see my goal through fog, and after a few moments, I came to my riverbank. Simple as it seems, I saw it as a profound analogy for life itself. There are times when we can’t see our goal, no matter how hard we peer into mist. Yet we have clues and that feeling inside that if we keep moving in a particular direction, our goal will eventually come into sight.

There have been many times in my life when my goal wasn’t clear to me. In fact, it seemed totally shrouded in fog. But I kept moving toward that goal, sometimes taking tiniest of baby steps, until my goal finally could be seen and achieved.

The river that runs alongside our farm teaches me lessons every day, a constant reminder that maybe old folks were right—you can’t sit beside same river twice.

© 2004. Gary E. Anderson. All rights reserved.