Dreams & False Alarms

I went for a run today, partly because I thought I should exercise, but mostly to clear my mind. I put on Court and Spark, since Joni Mitchell is an exception to my freakish indifference to entire albums, and set off down Pacific, feeling the very perfection of it all; the music, the sound of my breathing, the cold on my hands, the grey wash of sky and sidewalk, the contentment that comes from running alone.  I thought about people, what I’m doing with my life, the short stories that I’ve been reading this weekend, and wished that things always felt so clear and right as they did in that moment.

On a corner of Bergen Street, I thought I saw a girl I knew in college. I thought it had to be her, because of how the woman’s curls were haphazardly pinned in a wreath around her head, the same way that Kate always wore her hair. She turned, and her face was unfamiliar, and I felt relieved, and kept running past.

Joni sang to me while I sidestepped the uneven slabs of the slate sidewalk. “I was a free man in Paris / I felt unfettered and alive,” as I turned onto Henry, and “I feel like I’m sleeping / can you wake me? / you seem to have a broader sensibility / I’m just living on nerves and feelings / with a weak and a lazy mind / and coming to peoples’ parties / fumbling deaf dumb and blind,” when I passed the supermarket.

At Court and Amity, a couple crossed the street on the farthest side of the intersection from where I was jogging in place. The woman’s dark cloud of hair reminded me of the woman I had seen earlier. She tilted her head upward and to the side to look at the man she was with, and by the time I realized that I had just run by Kate, they had already turned another corner, or maybe disappeared into a cafe. I wouldn’t have said anything anyway.