Years ago, I lived way way east on the Upper East Side, east enough that it was a hike from the last stop on the crosstown bus, literally past the last avenue. It was a tiny tiny apartment – a sixth-floor walkup – and the stairs were spiral and outside and made of stone. I loved that apartment more than almost any other place I’d live in, mainly because, despite its minuscule square footage – I think it was 250 or 300 sq ft – it had three triple-tiered windows that went from ceiling to floor, and a tiny but useable balcony, which had once been for tuberculosis patients to “take the cure” but served as an excellent spot for looking out across Manhattan and the East River. Said apartment also had a kick-ass kitchen, which is pretty entertaining given that I rarely ate or cooked in it, but having counter and cabinet space seemed like an absolute luxury when I was twenty-one years old.
Given its proximity to the river and the tall buildings that lined it, my street was often like a wind tunnel. I remember walking home from Lexington or the crosstown bus on frigid nights, the winter air cutting through my hat and scarf. When it snowed, which it often did in the years that I lived there, large drifts would pile up, and the swirls of white would consume the buildings like low clouds. I spent a lot of time watching the world through those giant windows.
I remember waking one morning to a strange dimness, as though someone was cupping their hands over the sun and realized that it was snowing hard – storming – and nearly a foot already lined the streets. I love snow. I love how it mutes the world. I love the silence. I love the sense of solitude it can bring. Standing at my window that morning, I could barely decipher east from west. The streets were empty. I pulled on my running clothes and laced my sneakers tightly, then skip-slid down my six flights of outdoor stairs covered by windblown snow, flung open the gate to the building, and began to make my way west toward Central Park.
Snow running is hard work, and by the time I reached the park, I was out of breath and sore, despite being a reasonably experienced runner, so I slowed to a trudge. I couldn’t see the roadway and paths, so I walked and listened to the sound of ice crystals falling thump thump into the pads of snow. The sun had emerged from the cloud layer, and its rays sifted through the tree branches, covered in white, like a winter understory, the snow standing in for the spring and summer leaves. I walked and wondered and listened to the sound of nothingness. There was no one else around and for a good hour, I felt like time had stopped.
Then I got cold. Very cold. I pivoted and looked back at my tracks, now covered with a new layer of snow. I looked around and realized I had no idea where I was. I struggled to find a landmark, something familiar to give me a sense of where in the park I’d wandered to, but all I could see were trees. I panicked for a moment – these were the days before cell phones and watches with fancy GPS – and then took a deep breath and reminded myself that I was in a park in the middle of an island, and no matter what direction I walked in, I would inevitably hit one piece of the perimeter. I had run almost every inch of Central Park in daylight and darkness. It wasn’t possible to get lost, just sidetracked.
Lifting my heavy, frozen feet, I began to run. The snow was well past 18”, so it was more like high-knee jogging, but as the blood started flowing back into my limbs, as I began to feel my fingertips and stopped obsessing over the fact that I’d had to pee for an hour and that I hadn’t brought money or subway fare, as I just fell into the ragged but still rhythmic breath that moved in and out of my lungs, as my arms pumped and heart pounded, and my eyes gained greater focus on the snowy landscape before me, I managed to find my exit. It was, of course, way north and on the other side of town, but I reached the semi-plowed street and visible sidewalks, and despite having to run an extra few miles back home, I got there eventually.
I’ve been thinking about that morning lately – how beauty shifted so quickly to panic, how a journey through a place I knew with my eyes closed suddenly felt ominous, how lost I felt, how solitude morphed into alone, how hopelessness avalanched. Sometimes feeling lost in the known is more disorienting than being thrust into the unknown. It’s hard to remind yourself that you are also a park in the middle of an island. There are perimeters to every experience, even if they appear nonlinear. Even when storms blur things into gradients of white, there is depth beneath, there is underbrush, and there are clues to paths and exits and streets and subways and far-off rivers. Somewhere in there, the high-knee running shifts back to even strides and plowed sidewalks.
object of memory 