East River Run

There’s something about running in the pre-dawn of New York City. Right around the time when the people around are not ones to be feared - bleary eyed and clutching a small cup of coffee from the carts.

Left-right left-right pounding the pavement still hot from the sun the day before. It is in that rare quiet where thoughts can shake free from the multicolored distractors of 3^rd Avenue, the inherent delight of Time's square or the neon colored signs of ktown. The city is a symphony of lights.

Fewer sirens disturb the fragile moments captured between the techno blasting in my earbuds and the sound of heavy breathing. I still like to have myself tied to the mast while my rowers stuff their ears with wax and I listen to their sweet song.

Taxi horns sit silenced as drivers steal a few moment’s peace, preparing mentally for a day full of stop and go's. 

And I rush past them all. The East River rises on my approach my feet carry me further from the haze of Midtown, down uneven paths sprinkled with the occasional tree or patch of grass. Oh and a rat. A rat ran past me, about five inches away from my foot. And I squealed a little. 

Sure, there are moments where I long for the open green of just about anywhere else, trying to escape the concrete and steel hemming me in. When the idea of wide open spaces is defined beyond the 1000 square feet limit. But it in such moments as this, the Brooklyn Bridge looming ahead of me, or even as I stand jostled for space on a rush-hour 6 train, that I realize what people talk about when they mention the magic of the city.

You get an insiders look into the guts, (the trash), the people.

And then you've run for an hour, have no idea where you are and start seeing avenues you didn't know existed (and are not convinced they do). 

Run past places you know you need to try and find gardens that make no sense - stuck between two walk ups and behind a van that looks like it belongs in the 80s. Or a regularly sitting man who seems to be completely enthralled with the idea of braiding his own hair every day. And the basketball courts with weekend tournaments that make JV feel like you are running out under the spotlight at the barclay's.

Mackarel

One of those times when you go buy fries and you get cod.
Or crave a grilled cheese with plenty of velvetta and no care for the sweet and savory mix of fig jam and brie.
Look for a pinot and find a sustainable blend that goes well with sustainable, cage free, free range, organic, melodramatic seafood harvested not hunted and done so lovingly.

And then there's the idea of a quest.

Funny - the videogames title fables that promise 10s of Thousands of Combinations and Options. It's a pick your own ending RLStein Goosebump excepts it's a visual and creative and still far far short from our every day life.

That's just one man's thought. Though I've conquered nations, won the world cup of everything and travelled through bi-colored portals solving puzzles - it's all fallen short.

I've stood at the top of the Avenue of the Dead looking east, north, west, south and felt connections. I've seen Kukulcan snake his way during the solstice and equinox. Hurtled myself hundreds of miles and hour across time (zones) and space (well really some lower levels of the atmosphere that still hugs to us). I've carried babies deadly afraid of the soft spot, seen a child's amazement when he realizes that his own two feet are capable of motor skills.

I've eaten truffles. Hunted for chanterelles.

Now picture sports drinks promising hyper ionized energy. Oh good. Salty water. Or salt dissolved in water where the magical process of dissolving allows for a wholesale stealing and borrowing of electrons.

Shot rapid fire or subtly inserted into a sentence or word. They're interesting and drive conversation and human curiosity and I get to explore all of them now. 

Well built they can be inserted in poetry and high literature. They can disarm arm dealers and confuse the posers. They can unveil truths and complicate them.

***

"You can cross!" I yelled.

"I'm going to take your arm now" I said as I closed in.

And i reached out and grabbed his elbow as his hand found my forearm. The man was walking with a purpose - more purposed than most of us not wearing sunglasses at 745 am. 

"Where are you going"

"I'm going to the subway station - are you walking there?" I knew I was.

And so we walked with a quick back and forth over 3 city blocks. He was from Jamaica and going home after a swim at the Y.

And I haven't seen him again but I wonder if I'll see him every morning.

I'm coming home

Not literally.

Not metaphorically.

I'm actually just going back to the old country. Which in my case would be Spain, or Rome depending on whether I ascribed to the notion of the "old country" either by racial heritage or religious legacy. But the truth is that I'm going to the lower countries to visit a friend that I don't know in her natural habitat. And then I'm going to Sweden and spending a week in the family home of a sister I barely know.

And I'm being lenient on the barely.

But her daughter is a soccer player in college in the U.S. on a scholarship. I used to love seeing pictures of my niece, the only dark, soulful Mexican tan amongs a sea of platinum blondes and pale skins playing indoors. She was the shortest but she had hops. I've met her twice.

I remember a nephew in that I bought video games for him that were from time to time passed on via mail or personal courier. No idea what his face or personality might be like.

My sister poses as different challenge - a grown woman, with a husband she met online and has been happily married to for years - I wonder how she knew my dad. How I know my dad and whether or not we'll ever Venn Diagram our experiences and get a full picture.

But I'm finally excited for a trip outside my bi-national experience this past lustre.

I'm tired of speaking English and Spanish and look forward to once again have the doe-eyed, deer-in-headlights, glassy stare of the misunderstood not because they have some deeb psychological angst but because no matter how loud, and enunciated, Swedish is nothing like anything I've ever heard off. What should be even more exciting is Dutch. Tantalizingly close to German but just off enough where it's not enough. Like when you're standing on the deep end of the pool and you can feel the tip of your toe graze the bottom long enough to "be" there but not long enough to stand or give you a sense of balance.

And the winters are brutal in Europe but I'm hoping for one of those random sunny weekends where the continent grows alive as its denizens rush to the street in a desperate land grab of vitamin D.

Gregarious Pluto will be my guide but I'll also allow for a great deal of spontaneity in hopes of finding a strange street that no one has ever heard of before with delicious coffee or maybe hope to get picked up by a 1920s crank car that inspires me and teaches me a thing about Nostalgia. Or maybe I'll end up at Tesla (re: Electronic) party where the hero wears a masks and spins flash drives like it's his job and a mob of youngsters push through the crowds with video cameras held high in the air by extendable poles in an effort to make a mass concert available to the huddled masses (of the economically fragile ROE). But I can also hope for a bar concert that straddles the line between cabaret act and dark Dead Kennedy's vibe with a lead singer that comes in multiples, is French, possibly Bulgarian and who sings Sweet Emotion like she's Marilyn Manson but that can also croon Too Drunk To F*** like it's an sweet old Charles Trenet song.

And I expect Sweden to be covered in snow and the people to be friendly and kind and I expect myself to constantly debate for five days whether or not I'd ever actually wear wooden shoes. Maybe I'll get to see one of the communal living arrangements that make people so happy, kids well adjusted, and adults in their mid-forties feel self-fulfilled and like better parents?

Oh and I'm travelling in comfort - happily alone joined by friends, blood and in-law.