Long Walks On Leafy Streets

9/25/2016 Vista Sorrento Pkwy, San Diego, CA.
Summer is finally behind us now although it took its time leaving. It was nice at the same time scary to have 90-degree days in the middle of September. Scary because it makes you worry about what is in store as far as climate change is concerned. It is also pleasant to walk and run in 60 to 70 degree weather. This morning I ran about 14 miles. I started at the Takoma recreation center baseball field and then ran down along the Rock Creek on Beach Drive and the hiker / biker trail. I went all the way past the zoo up to Calvert Street and then ran back the same way. It took me two and quarter hours, although I was hoping to run it much faster given the comfortable weather. I am still recovering from shin splints and nursing what might be a stress fracture and my legs and knees were feeling mild discomfort. I am wearing calf sleeves while running and walking these days. They look like socks but only go down to above the ankles. They wrap the muscles of the calves tightly around the bones.
I must say they have helped me recover quite nicely, although there is still a spot on the main bone of my left leg (the tibia) that feels tender to the touch. Although disappointed I tried to just enjoy the scenery and the cool morning air. The funny thing is that when you stop bothering about how you are doing and just stay calm and enjoy the scenery your running gets better and the legs feel less weary. There were few people when I started, around 7.30 but as the morning wore on more were running or biking.

I do enjoy the scenery very much when I walk to and from my office from Prashant’s daycare center. I walk along the Macmillan reservoir. I love the sight of the Canada geese that have just arrived, the waters reflecting the sun as a patch of light on a cloudy morning almost as if it were the moon. One morning last week the waters were so still it simply stopped me in my tracks. Even a mild breeze makes the surface rippled so the air must have been exceptionally still. The lake looked as clear as a mirror and the trees on the other side looked like they were a painting on its surface.

The pleasant days of early fall were interrupted last weekend with the news of the death of our beloved colleague, Ralph Turner. He was 87. He has been my friend since the day I arrived at Howard. He was a lively, witty and kind African-American man that grew up on a farm as one of twelve children during the days of the Depression and Jim Crow. Yet talking to him over the years I have never heard a word of complaint or bitterness. He had eclectic tastes and walked to his own beat, enjoying PBS, playing Bridge, good food, fluent in French and Russian and traveling the world. After working at IBM as a staff mathematician for many years he taught on and off at Howard until almost the very end.

It is no exaggeration to say that he is a big reason I am still teaching at Howard. I developed a great amount of respect for black people, black men in particular, because of the example he set. He also showed me what it means to be a man and a true gentleman. He helped me get my driver’s license in the year that I arrived in Washington. I never drove when I was in L.A. Over the years he has been to many parties at my house and also graced us with his presence at our wedding. The last time he visited us was after we moved to our current home near Takoma, DC. Nicole and I were a bit saddened to see how his mental faculties were dimming. He was not the same, as I had known him, whose deep voice and laughter reverberated in our department during our Friday evening social hours with many humorous stories. He seemed a little feeble and overly forgetful. Nevertheless I am very happy that he was able to visit our home. After Prashant was born I wanted to invite him to his first birthday party, in June this year. There was only a message saying the number was out of service. I wish I had followed up and tried to get his contact information. But it might have been fruitless because I am told that he was being shuttled between a hospital and a nursing home during the past year or more, stricken with Alzheimer’s.

I drove to his funeral in Upper Marlboro in Prince George’s county last Saturday. The service was beautiful and it was clear that his family were relieved that he has been spared more misery. Yet seeing his mortal remains were a shock to me, a sudden jolt to the consciousness. I felt strongly that he was not in that body, and that his spirit is still with us, living in all of us. Yet it was also a reminder of how evanescent life is, just a momentary ripple in the cosmic lake appearing with a gentle breeze and just as quickly disappearing. For several days last week I could not shake off that scene with his body and the feeling of the impermanence or rather the illusory nature of life. As Krishna says in the Gita, “the Atma takes up the body and then sheds it just as a human puts on a dress and then discards it.” Whether you believe in the existence of something called Atma or not, sooner or later you come to the realization that this body is merely a vehicle for something higher, as momentary a form as a passing cloud.

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