this will reach your inboxes as i set out across the Verrazzano bridge.
in a published conversation between Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Daniel Alexander Jones, they talk about his performance work as ceremony, about ceremony as an invitation to presence.1 in this sense, the New York City Marathon is a ceremony - it invites the whole city into the streets to watch people run, or walk, or wheel. it is an invitation to shared focus on people testing their limits.
as i’ve been preparing this week i’ve been thinking about Hanif Abdurraqib writing, How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This?
and i know it’s distinct, but i’ve been wondering how any of us can run a marathon at a time like this. my instagram feed is a jarring juxtaposition: organizers and activists shutting down train stations, people mourning the dead and then running influencers.
the death toll in Gaza has surpassed nine thousand and i cannot conceptualize that number. we can’t bring them back.
what is the relationship between this violence and the running?
i run today to practice trusting my heart and my lungs, that maybe both could become more capacious. these organs that are older than all of us. to heed the invitation to presence and to breath.
fifty thousand of us assemble, alive.
i run today reminded that people are spurred to action, reminded that wonder is as contagious as hostility. i hear folks say i wanted to run the marathon because of the electric energy, because i watched my friend do it and i got inspired. my sis ran last year and it made me want to do it. you can feel the love in the streets.
for all the disaster, we are also moved to intervene, to participate.
"The capillaries that connect your heart to your lungs are both airstreams and blood flow. Doctors call them periarterial. In the maze of small blood vessels that process oxygen no one knows where your heart ends and your lungs begin.”2
lungs to heart, heart to lungs; that by breathing we might love better, by loving and feeling how loved we are we might breathe easier. that we might act from this murky place in our chests.
APG writes,
at the exact right time
at breaking points
we are moved and so we move. we interrupt the death machine, allegiant to life and not fear.
impossible like marathon, impossible like ceasefire.
until both are done.