Suddenly, Dr. Playground makes an appearance. The “y” in the shape of a stethoscope. Another freezing day, but that doesn’t stop Dr. Playground, the mobile fix-it truck that, presumably, keeps Prospect Parks’ many playgrounds in working order. But what to do since Dec. 26, when the snows came? No matter, Dr. Playground is spiffy as ever, sparkling clean forest green, no strained sewage for it, the color of the mini-growlers I had to hack out and around Vanya, twisting to get them out from under the car and I feel a twinge – uh, oh – but it’s a only temporary, put it down to my Jack LaLanne calisthenics, can’t afford an injury now.
Downhill is better, easier on the thigh muscle, along Prospect Park West, then down President to Seventh, and errands: the bank, the pharmacy, and Key Food for Diet Cokes, the daily vice, and, at times, more wine than I need and curl up before “Criminal Minds” and the steady serial of “The Jewel in the Crown,” from the mid-’80s, so funny how slowly the story develops, going down with a sip of brown: Heaven’s Hill or Duggan’s Dew, whatever else might be in the house, a nightcap, mind, and in these days of training no pull on my sleep, the next day’s another run, in this cold, nothing long, my 55-year-old body rebelling, rejecting what the training guide suggests, saying put in the miles but steady as you go, like the dialogue between “Bobby” and Mabel in TJITC, the long runs will come, projecting early March before I’ll be legging it out, this time for sure, Running to Harlem, as I write this, recalling the forefoot pain that I suffered through on a vain attempt to run from Brooklyn to Harlem last fall, the weeks leading up to the Steamtown Marathon in Scranton, Pa., but managed about a eighteen-miler, wincing in pain for half of it, and now, my right leg, still tender, if I didn’t know better I’d be thinking blood clot, the pain is so sharp at times, but I’ve done my bit, stretched and strengthened like never before, and as I head out again – six-miler, easy pace, fifty-fifty-five minutes – right away feel the inner-thigh muscle tighten, not easing as it always does, it’s the cold, I tell myself as I slow down, listen to my body, as the running mavens say, and the muscle holds in its tightness; a drummer knowing the tone of the bass drum is off, the tension too tight, but not so that I can’t get through the set. I need this gig. It's Week One, and the show, if there is going to be a show in April, must go on.
*
The other night watching a particularly nasty “Criminal Minds,” M got what “Black Swan” look in her eyes. “M,” I scold, “don’t do that.” Later, I shudder with an unexpected grisly sight during the episode, declare a concern for my favorite character, Garcia. After the show, I’m preparing for bed when M goes downstairs for something. She snaps off the lights, and a moment later is coming back up the stairs, slowly, her hands behind her back, accompanied by a gnarly sound. BS stare on the dark stairway. “Stop, M, no!” I say, as she claps two giant boxes of cereal boxes together. “Cereal killer!” we chime.
*
Blue sky and London plane tree, beyond the Sixteenth Street entrance just east of the equestrian oval, a red-tail hawk circles overhead. Wondering why, so often in this borough of millions, I’m here alone.
So you want to live in Park Slope, Exhibit B: A paper masking-taped to a brownstone wall, “Sanitation Department investigation: Please phone TK-TK.”
*
Most of the time, when I’m running, I’m not thinking of numbers. Or at least not in a linear way. Say, a number like 18.3. Not what I’m shooting for in my long run, 18.3 miles, next month. Gearing up for it now that a bit of a thaw has hit. Sunny and in the 40s today, Valentine’s Day. And what is 2011 but a numbers maven’s delight. Take 11 a.m. on 11-11-11, Armistice Day, when the First World War officially ended. 111 X 111 is 12,321, which seems innocuous until you consider, as The Economist writes in its “The World in 2011” edition, “the progression goes on: 11,111 X 11,111 = 123,454,321, and, wow, 111,111,111 X 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321.” No, 18.3 percent is the income share of the richest one percent of American households in 2007, the last reliable figures available and certainly that number is no smaller, and the last time America was in such an unequal place was before The Crash of 1929, when the equivalent figures was 18.4. (Economist, again http://www.economist.com/node/17957107) The classes, of course, are so apparent in “The Jewel in the Crown,” only less a part of our national myth but no less true of America, where thanks to Reagan and Clinton and Bush and Obama (Nixon, not on the list, funny enough) the very rich and the very poor have never been so far apart in wealth, only one route to power through the market economy, stocks always going up now; socialism for the banks, capitalism for everyone else, as I write this, on a Sunday subway, service deteriorating and prices rising, like the separation between super-rich and poor sure to get worse before it gets better and nothing is paying for itself, no meaningful reforms in entitlement programs, what did former Sen. Alan Simpson say about the green weenie (See RFYL: Interstate Imagination), and sure he is right that no one is talking about it, but how do you reconcile the need to spend to get people working, to inspire confidence in your town, city, country and country as a place to do business, against the lure of cheaper foreign countries, now thanks to electronic trading and free flows of capital there are limited restrictions and capital as Adam Smith intended will find its righteous home; when trade is free there is nothing to entice the buyer to be “rooted in one dear perpetual place,” as Yeats wrote in “A Prayer for My Daughter” – nor should there be, and it’s high time America got with the program, don’t you think?
Next: Running for Your Life: More on '18.3'
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