Empty Set
Clear city I ran through this morning. Its patriotic quietude under clouds represented the vacation day of Yale, commerce and movie crew. First run in a week where cameramen, gaffers and teamsters did not crowd the sidewalks. No extras milling around dressed in a hundred shades of brown and fifties cars in pastels. Actors frozen on corners in 6 am sunlight and old army uniforms. My route did not have to weave around blocked off streets, a motorcycle chase down College, Elm into Sterling Library (sacrilege). No hoards of fans trying to catch a glimpse of Harrison Ford. Indiana Jones has been filming in the city the past week. It's been celebratory with traffic honking for miles, hoards of aimless angry high school students getting into fights with Paramount employees when roaming is interrupted by a scene. Yet thoroughly lovely with old cars on old campus, strangers gawking at Buick's together and finding themselves in conversation, Starbucks dressed up as an old pub advertising fresh oysters and ten cent drafts. A block of Chapel Street windows have been dressed up, gone into costume for the movie or taken up a disguise so that there's now an old-fashioned barber shop, boot black's, and Woolworth's with a golden dancer rocking horse outside where there used to be nondescript modern stores. The fashions in the clothing shop windows have gone retro, by about 60 years. People stare at the stage set and pose for pictures. But for today the set of the movie and the city is deserted. No one's at the mike this set though music plays on.
I relearned how to run this morning. Up on Prospect, in the third 500, third mile. I set my heel down, pushed off my toe, lengthened my stride. And suddenly my legs were doing the work instead of being dragged along by my body bent forward, bent on getting somewhere. My lungs stopped seizing and I remembered there was technique not just will to going the distance. Around Park Street, there was a woman with five bags, loud green jacket, purple skirt, bright red shoes. She shuffled along. And she was wearing a plastic tiara. I wanted to tell her I had one just like it. I wanted to argue one didn't have to be crazy to wear it, hoping she had some place she was taking her bags, some where to go. As I passed the church on Elm, the bells began reciting the hour. Running away from it, each toll got softer, faded into a gentler reminder with distance. Still they chimed, Oh let not time deceive you, you cannot conquer time. Then they stopped, I turned the corner of my block and sprinted home.
I relearned how to run this morning. Up on Prospect, in the third 500, third mile. I set my heel down, pushed off my toe, lengthened my stride. And suddenly my legs were doing the work instead of being dragged along by my body bent forward, bent on getting somewhere. My lungs stopped seizing and I remembered there was technique not just will to going the distance. Around Park Street, there was a woman with five bags, loud green jacket, purple skirt, bright red shoes. She shuffled along. And she was wearing a plastic tiara. I wanted to tell her I had one just like it. I wanted to argue one didn't have to be crazy to wear it, hoping she had some place she was taking her bags, some where to go. As I passed the church on Elm, the bells began reciting the hour. Running away from it, each toll got softer, faded into a gentler reminder with distance. Still they chimed, Oh let not time deceive you, you cannot conquer time. Then they stopped, I turned the corner of my block and sprinted home.
