Getting Centered In the Loop (Run, Kid, Run!)
I’ve lived in New York City some 13 years, that swirling, maddening Center of the Universe. Just two years it was all about the delightful excesses of consumption — the most expensive condo ever (in the Plaza building, $76 million or something), $50 hamburgers, Swarovski crystals on your sneakers — and now, suddenly, it’s all lay-offs, my-misery-is-worse-than-yours, and Upper East Siders selling off their estate jewelry.
Whatever.
For in truth I’ve been here long enough to know it’s all pretty cyclical: Most of us here five years ago will be here five years from now, making deals, making fashion and art, making asses out of ourselves, on grand display for the entire world.
Which all brings me to a run in the park. The big loop in Central Park, to be exact. Most of those 13 years here, I’ve found myself on the road, traveling far and wide. Some of it has been fully employed by this magazine or the other, and a lot of it as a freelancer — gloriously without an office to trudge to, but simultaneously without any health insurance, either.
It’s certainly natural to wonder at your place in the world, but it’s magnified sensation here in NYC, where a random street corner is transformed every 15 minutes. Crazy tumult: That’s the baseline.
Yesterday, 2:30 pm — temperature around 30 F — and I was in the park, the place which most centers me while in New York City (which hardly makes me uncommon). The full loop is six miles and I enter at 84th street on the east side, where it takes you… (more…)
