Monday June 6, 2011: left at 9:10 a.m., and returned at 10:00 a.m. Total run time 49 minutes, 5.99km, 316 calories. A better run than last week, but I'm still walking about 20%. Though I run somewhat regularly, I'm halfheartedly in training for the Run for the Cure in October, when I want to participate in the 10K. Last year my friends and I ran the 5K, and it was really special.
I set out think morning thinking I'd try my new approach in Vanier and see if it worked as well there as it did in Rockliffe. I never got there, because things started happening in Lindenlea (a neighborhood whose limits I still don't really understand...over the course of these posts it might become very clear that I have no idea where exactly I live, or which community I belong to - maybe a side result will be that one will seem more me than the others, or not). As I was coming down the road behind the Governor General's estate, off Rideau Terrace, I ran up behind an old man - tall, lanky, teetering a bit. From experience I've learned this kind of encounter can end badly, so I stepped onto the road just as he turned around to look for the source of jangling keys and probably very unladylike gasping. He flashes me the most amazing Hollywood smile, despite his fisherman's bucket hat. He is the spitting image of a boy I had a big crush on in elementary school, aged 70 years, but preserved. I keep running after my returned smile and a hello (I initiated a few contacts today and feel better for it), but I think about both him and the boy from school as I keep on. I think this is why I find myself on the GG's estate rather than Vanier...better for remembering.
Three homes in Lindenlea: front yards full of poppies...just dirt and poppies. I don't know anything about this, but it's surprisingly beautiful. Poppies are so much more orange, so much duller than I always think they will be. I think about this. They splay out like the leaves of giant ferns.
The estate is deserted, except for ridden lawnmowers. It's a perfect morning in June, and there is not a tourist in sight. My running is labored and previously, I would not have noticed how entirely alone I was. The GG is still sort of new - he's an ex McGill principal and this makes me feel a little more entitled to his front lawn. I'm listening to a story about refugee camps in Kenya as I come up to his house, and the contrast seems extreme. More extreme though, is the intense singularity I feel running down his lawns - which are in some way, my lawns. Unlike other places of this type, I do not feel watched. I feel alone, but for that reason, safe there. I could sleep. They spread out forever.
Coming out the gates I am still looking: in front of me, in the sun, the glint of an enormous web, yet unbroken by tourists or guards. I dodge, and come away unwebbed. I see the spider that would otherwise be dangling from my elbows now. I feel pretty pleased for both of us. Moments later I will crash right through another web strung between a hedge and a light post. This takes practice.
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