Autumn Leaves / Late Capitalism

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.