Don’t let me lie to you. Don’t let me tell you I don’t love it. I do, but it is a love that is asymetrical, unpredictable. Running is unpredictable, the returns are in asymmetry to the effort, I never know what a run will bring, pain and disappointment or a thrilling enveloping rush.

Running Brooklyn streets at night is like shaking a bag full of glass shards, jangly, bright, dangerous. Last night the air traffic pattern to LaGuardia is right overhead and I run towards planes lowering so close I can see their underbellies even in the dark, their lights not the pinpricks of soaring jets but real, fist-sized, defined. A girl steps out from the undercanopy of a tree, she is examining the skis abandoned in the garbage at the curb. They are as tall as her and as I flash by I am confused at what she is holding in her embrace. Someone has chalked the sidewalk “gingle bells” “Merry Christmas” “love you”. I don’t have the light but I have a breath of space and so I sprint across six lanes of pulsing traffic because I simply don’t want to stop, I no longer have feet, I am liquid flowing down this street, I could do this forever.