A friend of mine who I ran with in high school wrote to me recently and we were talking about getting old. The miles, we agreed, feel a lot longer than they used to.
But after the past few years, I felt grateful to be running at all, especially in the park, where the irises were in bloom.
I'm also happy in a different way not to be biking so much, which is what I've done when I've been injured. I hate to say it, but when I contemplate biking in the city, I feel some dread. The cars are immense and the drivers are more aggressive than they used to be because the police don't ticket them. I also worry about getting a criminal summons, which the police starting issuing to bikers who run red lights and commit other minor infractions that for drivers would result in a regular ticket. There's no data to support this policy change -- bikers cause a tiny percentage (like less than one) of the injuries that drivers do -- but the police are doing it anyway, with the mayor's support. To bike in this city, in other words, requires engaging with a Trumpian world -- no facts and the demonization of a minority -- that's exhausting.
The poppies were also in bloom.
The rhododendron made me think about the Tiergarten in Berlin, which I visited twenty years ago this month to attend a conference for work. I don't remember anything about the conference, but I remember walking along what seemed like an endless network of paths, all lined with flowering rhododendron. It was a dream world.
I also remember thinking to myself while I was in Berlin that I could live there. The parks, the trees, the birds -- it was unexpectedly magical.
But New York City, I reminded myself, has its own pleasures and its own magic.
Which is why people who voted for Trump tend to hate it.
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