I know I had set up to write about Running to Harlem. Well, outside of reporting that I did it. (Not only did I run toward Harlem, as in the 125th Street entrance off the Henry Hudson Parkway, but I made it there!) And then turned around and ran back to our Brooklyn home, with only one stop to refill my water bottle at a rest area just south of the 79th Street Boat Basin, the only watering hole I could find that day along the Hudson River Park. (I was carrying a strap-affixed fist-size bottle that I'd bought earlier that day; I also wore a Velcro-compression strap on my left knee to keep my patella from wandering.) The conditions were perfect, thank goodness; cool and misty. A cyclist gave me an encouraging smile when I was striding north near the cruise ship berths in the 40s. And if it is the first and last time I run to Harlem, I will always have the slender beauty of the flowering fruit trees along the river that Friday afternoon (March 16), about ten blocks below my turnaround spot, where remarkably I had the place to myself.
Running for Your Life: One Month Away
Poem
An Immigrant from Krygyzstan Takes her First MTA Subway Ride on the D Train, 12:25 p.m., 3/08/12
Click, clack
Click, clack
Bump, bump
Kticketa, ticketa ticketa
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm
Whoosh
Static, giggle, hush
Too! Tune!
Click, clack
Click, clack,
Rumble, irrumble
Too! Tune!
Ha! Ha! Ha! Mutter
Static He – he – he – he
Ha! Ha! Ha!
Ka-choo!
Hong! Hong!
I might be losing it. It’s been two years that I’ve either been training for a marathon or recovering from the training for a marathon. Wednesday (March 14), I ran the equivalent of a half-marathon at a race pace (in Steamtown 2010, it was 8:08 per mile). The body is holding up (with the exception, on runs of 10 miles or more, of a cranky left knee that flares up a bit after I get home, but a half-hour of ice compress seems to put it right . . . ) but the mind? Obviously, (see above poem) there’s a case to be made that it may never be the same.
An Immigrant from Krygyzstan Takes her First MTA Subway Ride on the D Train, 12:25 p.m., 3/08/12
Click, clack
Click, clack
Bump, bump
Kticketa, ticketa ticketa
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm
Whoosh
Static, giggle, hush
Too! Tune!
Click, clack
Click, clack,
Rumble, irrumble
Too! Tune!
Ha! Ha! Ha! Mutter
Static He – he – he – he
Ha! Ha! Ha!
Ka-choo!
Hong! Hong!
I might be losing it. It’s been two years that I’ve either been training for a marathon or recovering from the training for a marathon. Wednesday (March 14), I ran the equivalent of a half-marathon at a race pace (in Steamtown 2010, it was 8:08 per mile). The body is holding up (with the exception, on runs of 10 miles or more, of a cranky left knee that flares up a bit after I get home, but a half-hour of ice compress seems to put it right . . . ) but the mind? Obviously, (see above poem) there’s a case to be made that it may never be the same.
Running for Your Life: Roadwork & Free Radicals
“If you left your laptop and muffin from Starbucks at the Recombulation Area, please contact an airport official and arrange to retrieve them.”
– Public address announcement at the Milwaukee international airport, Sunday, March 3
You never know what you’re going to see on the road. Last weekend M and I went to Chicago and Milwaukee to visit family. Rather than rent a car we took a northbound Amtrak train and then, the next day, an airplane home to Brooklyn.
I wish I were running alongside the train, and if I were, this is what I would have been thinking about:
• A sprightly looking sign says, “Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly.”
• Train bed rise through historic manufacturing and warehouse district, an urban outlaw paradise. Red brick manufacturing buildings, no more than three stories, probably two.
• “Chicago Dryer Company: the Global Leader in Flatwork Finishing Innovations”
– Public address announcement at the Milwaukee international airport, Sunday, March 3
You never know what you’re going to see on the road. Last weekend M and I went to Chicago and Milwaukee to visit family. Rather than rent a car we took a northbound Amtrak train and then, the next day, an airplane home to Brooklyn.
I wish I were running alongside the train, and if I were, this is what I would have been thinking about:
• A sprightly looking sign says, “Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly.”
• Train bed rise through historic manufacturing and warehouse district, an urban outlaw paradise. Red brick manufacturing buildings, no more than three stories, probably two.
• “Chicago Dryer Company: the Global Leader in Flatwork Finishing Innovations”
Running for Your Life: Alone Together
I’m struck by the idea of relevance. A new e-mail publication, or paid content that lights up your inbox on a regular basis, called Inside Hook, is devoted to the idea that men in their 40s need the equivalent of a social director on a cruise ship (presumably because in your 40s, as opposed to your 20s, you are saddled with non-hip responsibilities, aka, a wife, children, a dog, an income-producing job . . .)
This is why, it seems to me, Barney Rosset (see picture at right, and previous post) never failed to amaze me. As far as I was concerned, Barney, who passed away on Feb. 21, was always doing the equivalent of sitting on a park bench and reading manuscripts while the likes of Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso looked on. Another martini? Why the hell not? When you are the outlaw/badass of Manhattan publishing, what the hell do you need with the Inside Hook? You are the Inside Hook . . .
This is why, it seems to me, Barney Rosset (see picture at right, and previous post) never failed to amaze me. As far as I was concerned, Barney, who passed away on Feb. 21, was always doing the equivalent of sitting on a park bench and reading manuscripts while the likes of Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso looked on. Another martini? Why the hell not? When you are the outlaw/badass of Manhattan publishing, what the hell do you need with the Inside Hook? You are the Inside Hook . . .
Running for Your Life: The Life of Barney
The crows are circling high above the tree line, and the Quaker parrots that I always hear but rarely see are ruffle-feathered, a pair outside their condo nest, the morning after Barney died. Barney Rosset. Aged 89. Today (Feb. 22) is not just another day.
We, his family and friends, didn’t expect this. Not now. Just this past weekend we were all there in Manhattan’s civic chapel waiting area on Worth Street. Barney was too much a storyteller of the here and now to say our wait was like Godot. Still, to mention it would elicit that naughty, subversive, snake-like smile. (In an interview, Barney called himself “an amoeba with a brain.”) He wasn’t one to hold a grudge against someone for making such a lame reference.
We, his family and friends, didn’t expect this. Not now. Just this past weekend we were all there in Manhattan’s civic chapel waiting area on Worth Street. Barney was too much a storyteller of the here and now to say our wait was like Godot. Still, to mention it would elicit that naughty, subversive, snake-like smile. (In an interview, Barney called himself “an amoeba with a brain.”) He wasn’t one to hold a grudge against someone for making such a lame reference.
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