Running for Your Life: Flanerie Meets NYC Marathon

Here are 3 tips on “Flanerie,” the art of being a flaneur.

1. Slow down

2. No, that's not slow enough

3. Slower. Still

Here’s a thought after watching (and cheering!) along the NYC Marathon route (7-mile mark in Brooklyn)

National characteristics are astonishing in the way they are reflected in the responses of runners who have chosen to wear the equivalent of a name-attached flag in the race, ie, “Italia” and “France.”

Lusty cheers of “Italia” to those patriots pretty much without fail spurred an appreciative response, from fist pump, to smile, to sprightly step, while lusty cheers, to “Viva la France,” stirred but one “Merci” and an hour of too cool nothingness.

Oh, and yes, this runner is bound and determined to run in the 2020 edition of the NYC Marathon. 

Finally, 10 years after resuming this pursuit in Pittsburgh in 2010. It will mark my 10th marathon; so let it be in my hometown. After three decades of living here, a New Yorker to run in New York.

Next: Running for Your Life: Emotional Rescue

Running for Your Life: Photos Shot

Just back from traveling and felt the need to post this lament in the face of so many picture takers that my head was frequently swimming.

“Everyone is a photographer; no one is a Photographer."

Next: Running for Your Life: Emotional Rescue

Running for Your Life: Leafing It!

This blog post is going to be short.

You know, not something that the kids can tag as TLDNR … (too long did not read, to the uninitiated).

But I caught my leaf – actually three leaves!

Every season, as close readers of this blog may know, I run in the park amid the swirling leaves and, without stopping, I attempt to catch in my hand a leaf in mid-air. It is not to be trapped, and the only leaf treasures are those that have not touched the ground – a gust of wind that frees already-fallen leaves into the air are not fair game.

Today’s leaf was caught before a dreaded nor’easter, which is expected tonight and is certain to blow down millions of leaves in my jogging path.

Try it yourself. It is some fun – and gives an inordinate amount of surprising pleasure.

Next: Running for Your Life: Emotional Rescue

Running for Your Life: Zuck-ing Sound

It’s time for some straight talk.

Consider this reportage * about Commissar Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook:

“[He is] being photographed jogging in Beijing’s reeking, toxic smog, asking Xi Jinping to name his daughter (Xi declined) and making sure he has a copy of Xi’s arse-numbingly tedious ‘The Governance of China’ on his desk when Chinese journalists visit Facebook. (‘I’ve bound copies of this book for my colleagues as well,’ Zuck says. ‘I want them to understand socialism with Chinese characteristics.)’ ”

Here is the master of the Western Hive Mind genuflecting before the King of the Hive Mind, Xi Jinping, head of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party).

On Tuesday, the Democrats will gather for yet another all-candidates debate, aka, the kumbaya circle of like-minded cultural elitists.

Who among them will call out the Zuck for bowing down to his hive mind master? Who among them sees the existential threat from this pole of “executive” power – Zuck in his anti-democratic drive to manipulate millions for profit as dangerous to the commonweal (You are the bomb, Xi!) as the current resident of the White House?

Republicans are silent while Trump flouts democratic norms, and Democrats – at least in these critical national forums like the all-candidates dance – are silent while Zuck flouts democratic norms. (Anybody want to talk about the peril of a truly free press as Facebook drains advertising and readers from daily and weekly newspapers so that the number of even two-paper big cities is down to the single digits in a country as big and as powerful as the United States … ?)

That’s all for now – gotta freshen up my Instagram account.

*John Lancaster’s review of two new books about tech, China and surveillance, in the London Review of Books, Oct. 10, 2019

Next: Running for Your Life: Leafing It!

Running for Your Life: A Subway Poem

Since I came to live in New York City in late 1988, I’ve had a primarily positive experience riding in the subway.

Some of this has to do with the circumstances of my work commute.

As a daily journalist tied to an evening deadline, I’m currently obliged to take midday trains to Manhattan, and evening trains home. Off-peak trains mean that I am typically able to get a seat and be alone with my thoughts.

That means working in a journal. I either write notes about books I’m working on or reading, or draw people who capture my imagination.

I call these images my “Track Work,” some over the years I’ve painted or collaged … One day I will collect them and see what I have, maybe put them on Instagram the way the kids do these days.

The other day I wrote a poem, that speaks to some of what I’m talking about here, giving a sense of wonder I still feel thirty-one years after calling New York my home.

IN THE SUBWAY

There is a joy to watching

out of town folks riding the

subway, making for a

fresh outlook

on just how unique

this trip can be,

a moment’s glance

and memory erupts,

a recollection of

my first days here

of first days everywhere,

the wonder that is

awareness of your surroundings,

the comfort that travel,

an open mind transports

mood, takes you away

to a new place where time

stands still, or seems to.

Next: Running for Your Life: Leafing It!