008: Vermonting

Jogging as a metaphor, Adrienne Rich, Brandon Taylor, Douglas Stuart, Doodle Dispatch & the GEO union at UMich

But there come times . . .
when we have to pull back from the incantations,
rhythms we’ve moved to thoughtlessly,
and disenthrall ourselves, bestow
ourselves to silence, or a severer listening, cleansed
of oratory, formulas, choruses, laments, static
crowning the wires. We cut the wires,
find ourselves in free-fall, as if
our true home were the undimensional
solitudes, the rift
in the Great Nebula.

—Adrienne Rich, from “Transcendental Etudes”

Everywhere I live or stay for any period of time, I have a running route, and the criteria are simple but narrow: it has to be in my own neighborhood because if I have to drive to it, I won’t go; it has to be a loop so that I feel like I’m always running forward; it has to be about 3 miles give or take a mile; and it has to be at least partially in a wood or on a dirt path—something that is not just asphalt.

In Sydney, I would jog down to Freshwater beach along one street, lope across the sand and then jog back on the the next street over. In New York, I …