They’ve redone the paving stones along the walk from the southeastern entrance to Central Park, today (April 9) finally a day that makes me think of summer, which if you were to ask me if that were possible last time I was here, Saturday, January 22, no one out the frigid morning of the Central Park Half-Marathon except us, rogue runners, the hardcore, in the many hundreds, I’d have to say it was unthinkable, and now as I sit here, finally not feeling sorry for myself, embittered by what seemed so certain to me once, the culpability of the physical therapist who worked on my hamstring muscles only twenty minutes before The Event, two weeks ago tomorrow, a grudge that’s vanished, as foreign in feeling to me as if it happened to someone else, this me on a different path altogether, not a runner’s one alas, instead, memory lane, the sun’s warmth, winter like a icy remote island, its ferocity past, truly past, a young man dressed all in brown, Kiplingesque braids, sweeping away the bits of trash, the evidence of now, so that as M and I go back in time, from the Strand book kiosk entrance at East 57th Street, behind us The Plaza, the scent of horses, birds chirping, the murmur of balloon-shaping clowns, a puppeteer, an Arab man sizing us up as tourists, declaring, “You are here!”, pointing to an illustrated map that opens before us like an accordion, and M, the more instinctive New Yorker, counters, “We live here,” and the man harrumphs as if to say, “Well, make it more obvious, would you, you’re wasting my time,” refolds the map as I feel only a twinge in my leg under the miracle Tiger Balm patch, a mental-reminder to buy stock in its maker, and try in the thickening crowds to keep an even keel so that we don’t talk about The Injury, engage instead the Beginner’s Mind, when each moment is lived as if it's the first and that is what we think, M and I, we think, “Where did all the time go?” We both feel and probably always will feel like young parents when we’re on these trash-swept-clean paving stones, “Where is she, Kate? Did she run off ahead of us.” Those years we would always come here, even the years after we moved to Brooklyn, M, L & K in Central Park, the animal musical band of the Delacorte Clock; here at 3:30 p.m., Saturday, April 9, a half-month of Saturdays since the day of the freezing race, and off they march with their instruments, the Penguin drummer, the Bruin cymbalist, my faves, also the Hippo playing the violin, best seen in profile as it rounds the carousel and M sings the final note of a number that is being chimed, something from “Oklahoma!” that in the sun’s warmth comes flooding back to her from the first movie she’d ever seen on the silver screen.
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I had hoped, from the account in the Times, http://nyti.ms/ed0qiD, that “Rooms With a View,” through July 4 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, would be benighted in stillness, uber-reviewer Roberta Smith, exulting: “Artworks permeated for the most part by a luminous light and concomitant clarity of vision that regularly translates life’s daily pleasures – starting with looking out windows – into images of surprising formal vigor and emotional weight.” Alas, we went. Word of warning: When a good reviewer takes pains to write passionately about the chosen color of an art show’s walls that’s as good a sign as any that the show may be the assigned section cover but STAY AWAY .¤.¤.
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How to get there? The Beginner’s Mind? It is to be both inside and outside. Quietly Observant. Today (April 10) I feel the penetrating heat of Tiger Balm patch at the muscle tear, what was almost three weeks ago, imagine a swelling the size of a lemon where the top of the right leg and buttock meet is now aglow with elastic remedy, before me are four subway passengers as I write, one holding a paperback and a box of Girl Scout cookies, the caramel-colored ones with lacings of chocolate, across from me a woman in ear pods, natch, and zebra-striped backpack, flanking her a boy in a muffler, also entertainment-embedded, the other side a reader, ballpoint poised to annotate, and now the zebra bag is reading, unbeknownst to me if the pods stream music or language exercises, or nothing at all. I look up, the train is rumbling on the Manhattan Bridge, the letters and numbers, PIER 17, no-name glass towers, a green capstone, and wondering if it is the Woolworth’s Building, not it suddenly appears further along, rising above the tenements of Chinatown, and now in the tunnel, but the landscape remains and sure I would still like to be seeing it, on a long run, preferably across the Brooklyn Bridge, but instead I’m sitting, and, eventually, yes, walking, and who knows how long it will be before I can run. Again. Yesterday in my stocking feet in the closet before the mirror on my toes, and there is no pain, and I think Grade Eight, Dufferin Public School where the playground was rutted dirt, pebbled hardtop that sheered off kneecap skin with the barest friction, in the school basement doing calisthenics, running on the spot, one-two-three-four, counting it out and feeling no pain, but stopping anyway, trying not to cry. To hold on to what I’ve got. What my pal Mike says, Consider Sid Crosby, the best player in the world, the Stanley Cup playoffs now on, and he’s not been right for months, concussed since early January, and, with any luck, the Penguins my team since I was eleven years old, will still be playing in May. Like they were last year when I was running the Pittsburgh Marathon, the race a dream come true, sometimes we forget to embrace what has been. Because we always want more, don’t we? Is there anything wrong with that? Isn’t that what the very idea of the Beginner’s Mind is all about? Put judgments aside; life is wanting more.
Next on Running for Your Life: Keeping a Journal
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