1. I woke up early on Saturday morning in Philadelphia, where I had traveled by train to attend a non-heterosexual wedding. I was staying just a few hundred feet from Fairmount Park and the Schuylkill River, which splits the park into two halves (east and west). I started on the east side and ran south, where I passed a number of bridges, some old and some less old. 'This is way nicer than Central Park,' I said to myself as I continued down the not-too-crowded and sufficiently wide path (for bikers and runners) adjacent to the river. It felt good to run in a new city.
2. I stopped to watch a short, depressing play about the dying Constitution.
3. At the end of the play, an eagle turned to stone, symbolizing the ossification of our democratic institutions.
4. Returning to my run, I saw many bridges but had no idea how to access any of them. Eventually, I found myself in a rock garden.
5. In the distance, neoclassical architecture gathered under the rose-tinted dawn.
6. Some paths are worth taking, I decided, even if you don't know where they lead.
7. I still needed to figure out how to get to the other side of the river and the Schuylkill Expressway, which was constructed in an era when people still thought it was a good idea to build highways through the middle of parks.
8. I followed a path to a road to a bridge, where I took another road to a tunnel, which led to another road and finally a path next to the opposite side of the river. (Actually, the route I took was even more complicated than it sounds.)
9. But I made it to the other side, which was no less beautiful than the one I had left. The highway was camouflaged by the trees. There were paths and specimen conifers and no angry white heterosexual Republicans seething with belligerence about a system that had given them every advantage.
10. 'This world is way better than the real one,' I said to myself as the waters beneath me whispered and frothed.
