About Running
“First there came the action of running, and accompanying it there was this entity known as me. I run; therefore I am.”
-Murakami.
Yesterday I wondered if I should go for a run.
Evaluating my options and seeing that I had nothing better to do, I laced up my running shoes. I got to the lobby and was deciding what music to listen to, since, obviously, that’s the most important component of a run. I don’t have that much music in my iwatch, mostly classical, so I decided on Wim Mertens, seemed kind of appropriate, since I was going to be walking for a couple of minutes on the worst blocks of Manattan.
Sometimes I forget how magical the City is, walking in midtown through Times Square is like taking part of a live performance. For a minute I was getting pissed at people for walking too slow and stopping to take pictures of even the last piece of trash lying on the street.
I kept walking.
Questioning the concept of walking on the street at 10:30 pm and it being brighter than it is on a scorching hot day like today, questioning why people love going to a place that is super dirty, super crowded, where in one square mile you have the highest concentration of the worst restaurants in the country.
But I want to guess there is a certain right of passage of going to the capital of the world for the first time and being in what seems the center of it.
So after about 50th street, that there where a couple of free inches of sidewalk, I started running.
Remembering how for about two years I rode to my office on these streets, something that feels like it was a lifetime ago. I kept going uptown, each steet I advanced, it was a bit darker, a bit lonelier and a bit fresher. I then reached Columbus circle, which still kind of feels as if it was the edge of my neighborhood, and with the first step that I took on Central Park, everything changed, suddenly there was darkness, and I could breathe fresh air.
For me, that is the most magical aspect of this City, the densest, noisiest, dirtiest City, that there is this space in the middle of it in which you can get lost.
Although I was barely starting my run, my legs felt as if I had already ran a marathon, every step I took was like a little reminder that I was alive, a fucking great reminder that life is pain sometimes.
It was kind of dark and I decided to take some steps off the paths, to climb some boulders, to take some leaps without being able to see where my feet where going to land. People where lying on the rocks, people where lying on the grass, I took of my headphones and heard people singing, singing beautiful songs, I still really believe that the best things this City has to offer are free, for a minute, I heard the most beautiful concert in the middle of a forest.
I put on my earphones again but decided that since I was experiencing the best City in the world, I should be listening to the best music in the world
The first one that played was Symphony №5 in C Minor by Beethoven, seemed like a proper opening for what seemed to me as a the first act in a play, my return to running. The experience of running in between trees is beautiful, but there were so many streets I loved that I hadn’t seen in a while, so I took a quick turn and headed southeast, towards 57th and 5th, leaving Central Park with a view of The Plaza. Got me thinking how iconic some buildings can become, all the stories, misteries, and crazy shit that’s behing each brick. Trump bought it and it was one of he’s biggest failures, one of the most iconinc buildings in the world ended up being one of the most distasteful structures in the world, a place where corrupt Russian oligarchs would hide they’re money.
By now, The Four Seasons were playing.
How can you be thinking about anything negative in the world when you have the four seasons in your ears, you have the world at your feet.
And then you start kind of floating, your shoes seem to be barely touching the ground and everything is ok, you’ve got this, it’s only been three miles.
Although I barely run, part of the magic of running came to me thanks to my terrible sleeping habits, during a summer that I lived in Rome in a crappy apartment on the fourth floor of a very old building next to Santa Maria Maggiore with no A/C, there was no better thing to do on a sleepless night at 3:00 am than to go out for a run.
To really understand how the City was laid out, how every corner, every plaza, every alley is a statement. What it really means to get lost, and the more you get lost, the more you understand, the more you feel inspired by what someone had thought of hundreds of years ago.
By now I was running on Madison Ave, probably around 65th ave, I could run freely, there was no one on the streets, what a liberating feeling. The City that never sleeps, at this exact moment, in this location, was sleeping.
For all of the years that I lived here, my favorite moments have always been during a snowstorm, when even that, which you can always count on, like the subway, is closed. When people just stay home, when the deli around the corner is closed, when there are no taxis on the street. There is no better moment to be walking on these sidewalks.
I was looking for the Met Breur, where the fuck was it, with every passing block, I was about to give up, probably listening to Adagio for Strings wasn’t helping. Ever since I can remember, this has been one of my favorite songs, probably because it’s so fucking depressive, but when every step counts, this is not the mood that you want to be in.
Then my mind started to go back to when feeling pain wasn’t such a bad thing. There is a beauty in feeling, even if it’s pain. Remembering certain cycling races where I could even taste blood in my mouth, there came a point where pain was exciting, it meant you where actually riding, dig dig dig, as my coach used to say, I would just look down on my front wheel and fucking keep going.
Then I saw it, sitting kind of dark in the corner of 75th and Park, how brutal, a couple of stacked boxes that would have such an impact in art and architecture. Where the worlds best masterpieces would be shown, where the best young artists would show in biennials, to see work by a friend of yours in that space, history !
I know most neighborhoods in NYC by the bookstores that they house. I started remembering my favorite one on the Upper East Side, the one I went to on most Sundays I was here. And then, suddenly, I’m running over an Alexander Calder, a fucking Calder, in how many places can your feet be stepping over a masterpiece like this? My mind obviously starts going all over the place, how many Calders have I seen, in how many cities, in how many museums.
And then I get to the bookstore, that by now is a safe store. Seriously, who buys a one hundred and fifty thousand dollar safe, I guess if you had to sell them somewhere, it might as well be here, but I miss the bookstore.
Only a few more blocks to go,
Maybe I’ll walk for a block,
Or two.
But the met is coming up, so I might as well start running again.
And then I make a left turn on 82nd street.
If there is a moment in this run, it’s this, a quiet, dimly lit block with beautiful townhouses that ends on the steps of the Met.
I’m listening to suite №3 by Bach and running on the middle of the street, I have the whole block for myself and nothing matters, the only objective is to make it to the steps of the Met.
For sure, this has been one of my favorite moments in this City. It felt as if it was a scene out of a movie, not one single person in sight, one of the most majestic buildings as a background, MUSIC, as in art, also in the background.
By now it’s probably been like four miles, and since I haven’t really ran in years, I feel like that’s all I’ve got left, should I get a cab back? Since I didn’t bring my phone, I can’t get an uber, hmm, walking thirty blocks on Central Park or getting into a cab? That’s a pretty easy one
I walk for a couple of minutes, the same walk I did for years every Sunday, between UES and UWS. Am I seriously considering walking all the way back? It’s going to take forever, so just for practical reasons, have some balls and start running again. I guess it’s ok, what’s the worst that can happen?
What the fuck, why do I have to go there on such a beautiful night, by now I’m probably around 75th, I should probably go back and see the Museum of Natural History, which I haven’t seen in a while. It doesn’t matter if I’m tired, I should run my neighborhood.
Now this is a building, even after seeing it so many times, I’m still not sure if it’s red or pink, but it’s majestic, of that I’m sure, and it has dinosaurs, how much better can it get? Going south on Amsterdam is ok, I guess, nothing really interesting to see, but maybe that’s ok, a neighborhood should be made up of ok things, a pharmacy, a restaurant, a store, they’re all ok, nothing good, nothing bad.
Since the whole run has been centered around music, I should probably run by Lincoln Center, a few more blocks won’t make any difference. But what a difference it will make to run by what I think is one of the best complexes of buildings in the world. Never in my life did I imagine I would love gilded buildings so much. Going to architecture school at different points they told me that doric columns where great, that, I thought was shit. Then they told me that white boxes were sublime architecture, that one I beleived, but at one point it gets boring. Then they told me that organic forms that you couldn’t even build where the answer to everything, seriously? These buildings have been here forever and everybody loves them. Why aren’t we doing more gold leaf covered buildings?
