Saturday June 4th, 2011:
I left the apartment at 11:50am or so, and returned at 12:44pm. This seems long, for my third run of the season, but I only ran 4.44 km, and not very fast. At the top of Acacia, there was a man sitting on the little patio outside the mysteriously-Malibu apartment complex at Rideau Terrace. Despite my iPod he said something conversational, but not one of those hello-phrases that lets you get away. Now, given where I live, and my experience with neighborhood like Rockliffe, where I run, I am ashamed to say that I presume people to be rude and uninterested in a young jogger. I am so wrong, and am wrong so consistently, that I know my presumptions must end, and change. This is not the only thing that I realize I need to learn though. It’s not the rich and settled and their children who are cold: it’s me. I like to think I am loving, and interested, but my runs have become guarded, closed off sessions with my ear buds, and my map-run tracker. And as I’m speaking with this older man, who I would normally blow off, especially so early in a run, and I’m petting his beautiful young retriever “Molson Golden”, and his cats Gilly and a young one one on a string whose name I can’t remember, it comes to me that our conversation is real, and interested in each other, and kind, and that I’m actually enjoying learning about this stranger’s career and children, and that he seems to actually care about mine, and when I leave, after about a fifteen minute chat, I can see how disappointed he is. I recognize that I hope I’ll run into him again, and that he’ll strike up conversation, and then, I think about the woman, who in my mind should be on her way to tennis and unaffected by her children and shallow, who reached out to me on Thursday, when it was so hot out. I think about the conversation we didn’t have, and about the things I now don’t know about her. And so for me, who so craves human connection, this is a lost thing that I will never get back. The reality of my position sinks in: I have been the problem here. I run by. I actively avoid listening. I do not share. I, like maybe many others, retreat into the space between my ears, the gadget in my pocket, and the few feet ahead of me. And I miss EVERYTHING.
So, I opened my eyes. My project is about what I will take in and connect with, rather than just run past. My routes are important, my times, my calories, fine. But when I think about my run I want to gather up all the things I experienced, the things we see that seem particular to that experience, the people who speak to you when they know you cannot hear and who bring you back into the fabric of the space you claim. We are increasingly separated, and the world looks different when you run, and these two things are things I think, that make these records worthwhile. I may track my times and distances, but I hope there will be more to track that this. The infinite detail of things when a person runs, is perhaps inspired by the details of our bodies, our fibers responding, our breath in our ears, the texture of the ground, and these things are so important, really, but they can cue a person in to other details of equal importance: the first red leaf, the last tulip or lilac (which is so fleeting), the exotic animal, the neighbor’s first name.
Today, in order:
The French second-language Ottawa U prof, who asked if I had just graduated, who asked about my work, who has a 4-month old retriever, and two long-haired pale orange tabbies. His skin condition which we did not talk about. His friendly neighbor who will not be going away on vacation this summer, who was walking a chocolate lab, that played with Molson, and who was carrying a baguette.
Up the top of the Rockliffe circle roads: a black BMW with the lights flashing. Nobody in the yard, but a black baby in the front seat, alone. I notice as I’m passing because he looks at me. We look at each other. The baby looks worried because of me. I stop, I go back, I look around some more, I look at the house’s windows for adult signaling. I look for someone to tell me what to do. The car windows are open. I worry, and the baby worries. I worry about what the homeowner will say if I inquire if they know there is a baby in a car in their driveway. To my shame, I do not do this, and I go on, hoping it will be okay, that they are coming back. When I get home, I worry that the front door was closed: it would have been okay, but the front door of the house should have been open. I wish I’d noted the address. I continue to worry.
Two young (because they were small) cardinals on Rideau Terrace by the Eastern European embassy. Seemingly, they were playing, but I don’t know anything about cardinal behavior. They are the second and third cardinals I have ever seen in my life. Yesterday, on a street near the hospital, a cardinal swoops onto a branch above my head. The cardinal is huge and the branch dips. It seems so unafraid and I edge nearer. These cardinals see me and hop-flop into the hedge. They look like they are having fun, or fighting.
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