Two bridges, 6 concrete miles, and thee
Running while falling out of love
There are lots of things we have to face in life, but maybe one of the most terrifying is when we have to fall out of love. Whether it’s our choice or not, it cannot be pleasant, but the way we handle it can either set us up for a new love or put us far, far away from it.
For me, running has always delivered both escape and processing power for my emotional needs. This week, I’ve written about a course I used to run in about 2007, after a break up. Let me know if you’ve ever had to run to process your love or your disappointments, and how that work(s/ed) out for you. I hope you enjoy the story; it’s absolutely true. Whatever your emotional state today, remember, go run.
running has always delivered both escape and processing power for my emotional needs
Williamsburg
I stand with my toes hanging over the sidewalk, my heels on the doorstep. The scratched, graffitied metal door slams behind me of its own accord. Overhead, the brakes of a Manhattan-bound JMZ train scream their final scream to stop at the Marcy Station. The dollar store across the street is closed and so is the fried chicken place next to it, but the bodegas on both corners are open. I can not tell if the laundromat was open; its windows are blacked out by the industrial machines stacked on top of each other.
To my right the Korean grocery spills light and cabbage leaves into the street and the cats that live there slip between the stands of squashes and apples and whatever other produce was to be had that day. I hadn’t felt like eating in days.
I step down from the doorstep onto the wide sidewalk and above me a Brooklyn-bound train groans metallically as it slowly winds around the approach curves to the station. The day’s road traffic had ended a little while back and cars had deserted the block. Plastic bags and bits of paper blow across it and get caught in the oily slicks that collect at the curbside.
I turn left towards the river and start to run. I skirt the edge of the bus plaza and run lightly over the massive marble slabs in front of the old bank building. They are slippery like always and I take care automatically. The Williamsburg Bridge’s massive pink, skeletal structure looms above me. It is odd that the bridge is pink, but someone had explained to me that the shade of red/pink was calculated to be cautionary (red) while not too abrasive and alarming (pink). That was the plan, I guess, when it was painted. Maybe it was once red/pink but living in the sun as it does has affected the paint and now it is simply pink.
The Williamsburg Bridge has two pedestrian tracks on either side of the train tracks: one for people on foot, one for bikes. The one for foot traffic is on the south side of the bridge and bikes are on the north. The entrance to the foot traffic side is a sharp ascent because there are only two blocks between it and the river’s edge, where the bridge starts in earnest. It is narrow and dangerous if bike riders descend it, which they sometimes do.
My breath labors as I lean into the ascent but I already feel like I am flying. The lightness which was a result of not eating for days was, I knew, unnatural and artificial but I enjoy it, greedily and unhealthily, like a smoker drawing cigarette smoke deep into their lungs. But I am not in so deep that I can not get out. I am not like I was in high school, and right now any advantage I had was an advantage to take. I crest the bridge and open up my stride as the concrete slopes downwards. Two trains pass each other beneath me. Their weight shakes the structure and their sound washes out any other sound that might have been at that moment. I look at the river through the chain link fence to pass the time as I run. I’ve often thought how odd it is that the river seems to have no sound as it passes under these bridges because I know that any mass that big has sounds, many sounds, but I know it’s just that the city is so noisy we can’t hear them. The city is massive and it has sounds.
I hit the final descent and the slope increases; I open my hips and let my heels fly. I can feel the wind on my face and I pass bikers and runners and walkers carefully. The last thing I want is to be noticed right now and harassed. I want to disappear and I want everyone else to disappear, and the only way to do that is to make my passing as quick and silent and unnoticable as possible.
Manhattan
I hit Delancey. The light is red like it always seems to be but there’s nothing to do except wait while three lanes of traffic stream by. The intersection is gigantic and the bright, thick white striped crosswalk stands out incongruous alongside the dark, dirty, worn down streets, sagging buildings, and junk around it. It is one of the only places left in Manhattan where there is an empty, cracked parking lot, unused and partly fenced by broken chain link. But even in its rarity that intersection can’t be loved; it is too hard, too messy, too sad. It is a pass-through and always remains so while I live there.
I run straight on Delancey, past Allan and Chrystie and onto Kenmare. I don’t notice the change because Kenmare St is just a couple of blocks, almost too short to exist. I run straight towards a wall of buildings and cut 90 degrees left just before it, at a square shaped like a triangle. That is where Centre St starts or ends.
Centre St at night is almost empty, which is the best you can hope for in New York. The sidewalks are wide and the street is narrow. Two lanes of cars pass uptown until they double themselves and head downtown as well as up. I have never located where the cars reverse and stream downtown as well as up because I do not drive and so the driving rules have never been of much notice to me. I only notice crosswalks.
Some patches of sidewalk on Centre street are left over from earlier times when civic and bank buildings had to be made of marble to communicate a sense of surety and trust. Like the bank sidewalk back in Williamsburg, which I think of as a sort of short warm up to these patches, these are made of marble or granite slabs the longer than most people are tall. They are worn down by a century or more of foot traffic so their edges curve down to the gutters and slope inward at the seams between the slabs. In the November wet they are as slippery as moss and as hard as they have ever been. Running over them is a skill, a sort of flat, mid-foot strike with weight rolling outward for stability and a slightly shortened stride. I try not to flatten my toes or touch my heels to those surfaces for fear of dawdling on them and skidding out. I also try not to go too lightly, like a lizard on the surface of water, for fear of not making enough contact and slipping. It is a delicate balance but it only ever lasts for a few yards and then newer, rougher concrete returns either in patches or for long stretches. The marble is only for old buildings; normal buildings get concrete.
Centre St spreads out like a puddle around courthouses and a police station that sits above the downtown Manhattan lock up which is called The Tombs. I have never been there, and most of the inmates are male, but it is something of a badge of honor amongst the man-boys I know to have been there. If they are on the search for intimacy they’ll brag to the party crowd about having gotten arrested and taken to the Tombs, and then will whisper to the girl they favor about how terrible it is so they can take her home that night. For this reason I’ve heard many times how cold and damp it is and how the inmates smear shit on the walls and throw urine around. After trying it once the men-boys never go back. I usually do the same.
The Brooklyn Bridge
None of this matters to me as I run through the wide plaza where Centre St gets lost. At the narrowing on the other side there is a sharp elbow and suddenly the Brooklyn Bridge injects itself into the roadway. Accessing the Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian walkway is a little annoying but at least it is short because there is not much space here so the roads are narrow and the driving options are heavily regulated.
I have never liked running over the Brooklyn Bridge. The wooden footpath is uneven and unless the weather is rainy or snowy the path is always choked with people. Most of these people are tourists and they are as inconsiderate and unaware as all tourists are anywhere in the world. Night is better than day, obviously, for running, and I only have to dodge a few lovers and strollers as I ascend towards the mammoth granite uprights that are one of New York’s call signs.
The ascent is probably as long as the Williamsburg Bridge but does not feel that way and the descent into Brooklyn is longer. The wooden walkway slopes down gently as cars stream below the lovers and strollers and runners. I am relieved when the wooden slats give way to concrete again, signaling the end of the bridge. I run protected by high walls on either side, keeping to the middle to pass walkers and squeezing against the walls to avoid bikers until the path ends at a complicated intersection the rhythm of which I have never understood. I turn right, uphill, and wait for the light.
Carroll Gardens
After crossing the traffic the uphill begins in earnest and I enter a silent commercial neighborhood. The contrast with the bridge and the traffic on the bridge is shocking but the sound of my breath quickly fills my ears. There is not much else to listen to. There is another courthouse and a formal park on my right where no one lingers at night.
I turn left now, heading deeper into Brooklyn. I have just over one mile to go before I reach the subway station that is my goal. This last mile is a gentle, continuous uphill. It is not hard unless you think about it but if you think about it you cannot stop noticing the uphill and then you might be done for unless you can push the thinking out of your mind and think of something else. I think of the man-boy who dumped me. He had proposed to me and when I stalled for time he was offended and our relationship was never the same after that. I did not handle the break up well but in the intervening years I have recognized that he was manipulative and false and I am glad that I had the guts to say no to someone I truly loved but did not trust enough to marry.
He lives in this neighborhood I ran into but I cannot allow that proximity to close this route to me; it is too good with two bridges and very few stoplights. In this neighborhood there is no graffiti or elevated, screaming trains or laundromats with blacked-out windows. Here there are big, century-old trees and brownstones with wide windows behind wrought iron fences. This neighborhood looks like a movie set and has, in fact, been a movie set many times. My ex likes this movie-set look but I find it false and sad because I see many people who move to this neighborhood for that movie-set look and then are disappointed that their lives do not play out like a movie. It seems to me a neighborhood designed for divorce: no one’s life is this perfect. I am aware that it is not always desirable to live amongst graffiti and dollar stores and shrieking trains but at least when you do you know where your problems are. They are in the oily gutters and rats that must be caught by grocery store cats. They are in the drip of dirty water from swamp-cooler ACs and the stench of garbage with no one to collect it. They are not behind wide windows or wrought iron gates or vast slabs of brown stones. One neighborhood has the dignity of money while the other does not, but what I have learned is that with money or without, love is love and it will gut you under leafy oak trees just as badly as it will in a sewer. The only difference is how much you have to lose while you bleed out.
The subway runs beneath the neighborhood’s main road which is one block over but I stay on the side street. The sidewalks are narrower and humped up by tree roots but there are only a few people walking dogs to dodge since people in this neighborhood live tidy lives and are mostly inside by November nighttimes. I crest the hill and cross the line I imagine to be there in front of a family-owned Italian place I have no intention of ever visiting. Its window-signs brag of its fifty year history; it is a neighborhood stalwart and has absorbed the movie-set atmosphere and contributes back to it.
Take the subway home
I walk the long block over to the main road where the subway is and sit down to stretch above the subway and beside the kitchen entrance to a new restaurant that replaced another new restaurant. I can see my breath and I know that steam is rising from the top of my head. I feel light and high. I feel empty and fresh and happy the way I imagine a new blade of grass feels. I feel anonymous and safe in that anonymity, as if I’ll never have to face anyone again. I look down at my shoes as I fold one leg over the other and feel my springy muscle sing and dance oxygen up and down itself.
A lady turns the corner from the main road and walks the few feet towards me and sees me in the dim light coming from the kitchen door. She stops and asks me if I’m okay. I don’t know why she would ask this question until I realize how sad I look because I am thin and folded over and sitting on the ground. I don’t feel sad and my thinness is a matter of celebration to me because of how I was raised and what I was trained to think. I realize I’ve never seen anyone else stretching alone like this so she must be concerned I’m hurt. I look up at her with a smile on my face to reassure her. I put on my best, most polite accent and thank her for her kindness.
Another well written and engaging piece. A joy to read.