bridge bys ...

I think having a gym membership contributes to New Yorkers' desensitivity to poverty in the cracks (and sometimes right out in the open). When you have the luxury of going to sweat it out in the winter (or any other season) at a gym with a bunch of other people who can also afford, at minimum, to spend $100 a month for that privilege, you can encase yourself in a comfortable bubble. I realized yesterday while I was running along the river, through depressing amounts of grey snow, puddles and half-melted ice how depressing that run is. It's along the expressway, and more often than not there are sleeping bags and dirty mattresses full of people sleeping under the bridges along the way. Of course, I have also previously mentioned the fact that the Randall's Island foot bridge seems to be the hobo pooping haven. Once while I was crossing it, a ranting crack head touched my arm, and it felt like one of the most violating things that has ever happened to me. And I believe I've mentioned the man with the shopping cart full of his life's belongings that loiters beneath the stairs of the foot bridge over the FDR at E. 111th Street. He keeps to himself, but he's consistently there; things never improve for him, though sometimes he has a few more or a few less things in his cart.

The other day I thought, "Once I get more comfortable financially and catch up from the nightmare personal work decline of the past year and a half that is finally looking up, the first thing I'm going to do is buy a gym membership again." And I think the thought was formed a lot because, when I get lazy and don't want to walk all the way to Central Park -- which presents me with a blissful cakewalk(run) during which the worst thing I will encounter is a clueless looking-up tourist that won't move out of my way on the running path -- running is pretty depressing. The "river people," and honestly, even the people walking there with dogs, etc., are often creepy and sad, and it makes me uncomfortable, probably because like so many other New Yorkers, I feel that horrible, selfish truth welling up inside: I have no desire to help them get out of their situation, and sometimes wish I didn't have to see them at all. But maybe it's not so aggressive as all that. The feeling is more that I recognize the futility of helping with my normal resources, and my complete inability to understand how they got there or how their lives must feel.

Even at my lowest, I've at least had family members and friends to send me boxes of food and other lifelines, and those people care whether or not they get to me and know enough about me personally to send things that I can actually use.