from October 20,
2019 – Cambridge, MA
Writing is
wonderful because it forces you to pay attention (i.e., appreciate) things, and
because, through the act of writing about your experience of something, it becomes in
some ways richer and more concrete.
Writing is
also awful because all the richness and complexity and mystery of experience is
crammed into the confined space of one’s writing ability and vocabulary.
* * * *
The Geneva
20k is in a couple of weeks, and today I ran the last of my long runs (13
miles) before “tapering” which I’m not sure if you’re supposed to do for a 20k
like you do for a marathon, but which is the best part of training for a
marathon, so I’m allowing myself to taper.
I left the apartment around 8am, after the sun had risen and the
temperature had warmed up a bit.
This
weekend is the Head of the Charles regatta, or I should say the BNY Mellon Head of the Charles, as it’s now sponsored by a bank, or, per its website, “The
Investments Company for the World (sic?).”
There wasn’t much evidence that anything special was going on up near
the Longfellow Bridge, but as I moved west of Mass Ave and the river started
narrowing, the telltale signs of the “Head of the Chuck” started to
appear. A village of sponsors’ tents:
Yakima roof racks, Peet’s Coffee, food trucks including something calling
itself the “Butter’d Lobster Experience,” and, gilding the lily, Brooks
Brothers. Middle-aged couples wearing
worn baseball caps and sunglasses, torsos warmed by fleece and goose down. I lost count of the number of school lacrosse
jackets I saw – each with lax sticks crossed above the wearer’s heart. Exeter, Dartmouth, a few schools I hadn’t
heard of but had compounded names (i.e., “The X and Y School”) which sounded
old and rich.
The Head of
the Charles is known in some circles as the signature autumn event in Boston, and
today was tailor-made: leaves in golden mid-explosion, crisp air warmed by acutely
angled rays of sunlight. Part of me can
appreciate and enjoy all this, and applaud the kids in the boats, rowing away,
working as a team, etc. But the symbolism
here hits you dead in the face: a celebration of (overwhelmingly white) wealth
and power, cheering itself on as the next generation straps itself in (facing
backward) to the vessels that will carry them along the calm waters, while they
execute repetitive, uncreative motions to power the machine.
By the time
I got back to the Mass Ave Bridge, they were preparing for the “8s,” and the
wide part of the river was dappled with dozens of boats. From a small inflatable dinghy out in the
middle of the river, a woman with a bullhorn was trying to keep them all
organized in the staging areas as they approached the starting line. The sight of all those boats on the water was
truly impressive, in the way that I imagine the ships approaching Normandy on
D-Day must have been.
