Running Late
On why people are at their most beautiful when chasing a train or bus.
Essay first appeared in Flaming Hydra.
As I was walking to the train yesterday morning, I saw a woman speeding into the station and down the stairs to catch the G train. She was dressed professionally, wearing black flats and a black skirt, and behind her bounced a gray backpack. I knew I wasn’t going to make that train, so I walked, but for some reason, she needed to be on that specific train to get where she wanted to be on time, and so while I was strolling to the station, she was running at almost a full sprint. If she hadn’t been wearing work clothes, I imagine she would have been even faster.
She didn’t make it. I could see her disappointment and frustration, as well as how out of breath she was when I walked past her to sit and wait for the next train that was scheduled to come in five minutes.
Beyond the impediment of her outfit, the fact that she needed to be on the G train probably made it more difficult for her. For some reason, the G train is shorter than the other trains and so when you arrive at the station late, you can’t just jump into the last car like you would with the F. You could make it there while the G is still at the station and still miss it unless you’re an Olympic level sprinter. The G train demands more from you than the other trains.
Running after public transportation is a common experience that can be both humbling and embarrassing. You can sense how much people try to avoid it at train and bus stations. They speedwalk, call out to the conductor, and ask people to move out the way, all to avoid the mounting inevitability. You have to run to catch that train or bus before it leaves.
It’s embarrassing because it makes you stand out. Suddenly you’re the desperate person running while everyone else is walking, which can lead to so many accidents like bumping into other people, tripping over your own feet, or falling down the stairs. If you’re carrying something, then you’re the person sprinting with their bags swinging all over the place. And then of course the running leaves you sweaty and tired by the end. It’s anything but refined.
In everyday life, we’re not really asked to be athletic. Running to catch the train is also humbling because it will reveal how unathletic you are or have become. Some of us still participate in sports, and others go to the gym, but I would bet that the vast majority of adults haven’t had to do a full sprint since they were children. Unless they are late to the train station, bus stop, or airplane gate. And when you have to catch a train or a bus, once you set off on that sprint, you truly feel the weight and limitations of your body. You’re nowhere as fast as you imagined, your body is much heavier than you remember, and after a few seconds, you find it hard to breathe. You have no stamina.
Yet I find people running after trains and buses to be such a beautiful sight. The combination of desperation and hope in their eyes and movements adds so much drama to the short sprint. The person is so vulnerable, so exposed, as if, in that short burst, they have cast off all the numerous masks that we wear in everyday life, all the ways that we conceal ourselves and what we want, the ways we hide who we are and how we feel, and it all comes pouring out in those few seconds. I want to catch that train. I need to be on that bus. I will make it. Maybe I won’t, but I have to try. Please be there when I get there. Please don’t leave me behind. I can’t fucking believe I missed it.
The great advancements of the modern world have left many of us divorced from our bodies, in a state of being where we spend most days feeling trapped or at least repressed in our physical form. We have to counter this by carving out time to exercise, holding the line against a condition that would make our bodies decay faster than nature intended. This separation from the body has obvious consequences, but I’m not as concerned by health and the craze of thinness as I am elated by the spark that a person has when they are obeying physical imperatives outside their bodies, inhabiting their bodies fully, and being dynamic. When human beings are in motion, they are alive in a way that you don’t normally see.
The way that their hair flows in the air, following behind them. The muscles in their bodies twitching, activating, and pushing forward. The way that their brain comes alive, in anxiety and excitement, scanning their surroundings, taking in information at an accelerated rate, solving the problems of time, space, and anticipation. Blood running and the heart beating faster, the lungs expanding bigger and bigger to take in more air, the nose doing the same, sometimes the mouth. The skin glowing from sweat and activity. It’s all so mesmerizing and entertaining to watch.
A normal person running after the train or bus is a different kind of excitement and I think a more human excitement to me than watching athletes play sports. I love sports and deeply appreciate the ways that superhuman athletes expand the imagination of what the human body is capable of. But there is a great distance between their physical superiority and the body of a normal person. Their feats say more about the realm of sports than about the lived reality of ordinary human beings, and the beauty in what they do exists in a different space for me than the beauty in watching someone set off on a sprint to get to work on time.
Watching a game is like watching great theater. Athletes are not exposed in a way that an ordinary person running is. They may be emotionally vulnerable after a win or a loss, but the sphere of sports is a stage for performance. You’re watching masters of physicality at work, on that stage, far from you, far from the world. What makes the ordinary person sprinting so fun and makes the person so alive, is that they’re in the world with you. They’re your friends, your neighbors, strangers, and sometimes you. They’re people who are going through life the same as you, following the same social rules and cues as you, trying their best to get through the days without trouble, and often minimizing themselves, not out of shame or fear, but simply because they are in public and part of the public world. Even though we are all unique individuals who may feel like the most special people in private, out there we are one of hundreds, thousands, millions, and billions. We adopt an anonymous role out of respectful politeness and sociability.
But then you’re running late for the train or the bus, and speedwalking won’t cut it. You have to run. You have to take the stage and bring attention to yourself. You have to use and feel your body in a way that you have forgotten. You have to show us and the conductor or bus driver what you’re made of. You have to get to point B from point A as fast as possible with your body and everything that it’s carrying. And within that short sprint, a sudden burst of aliveness, is the whole human drama. I want to get there, and I’m going to try as hard as I can.
Some of us catch that train or bus, and the satisfaction is not only in getting to where you want to in time, but in delighting in the success and possibility of your body. Others come up short. We miss by a second or by one step. The train or bus leaves us behind. We have to wait and humbly reckon with what our bodies can’t do. But that is fine. At least to me. What is beautiful is the openness of the body and soul in that sprint.
There’s a bus that goes to the park that has a stop a few blocks away from my apartment. It’s also where the route ends for one driver and another comes in. So that when it arrives, there’s a few minutes’ lag before it departs again. I can usually make it even when I’m running late because of the changeover. But this knowledge about the lag can lead to a kind of arrogance.
One time, I was walking to the bus which had arrived a few minutes before, and I saw the new driver getting in along with the passengers. The changeover had happened faster than I’d anticipated. I made the calculation in a split second—can I get there before he leaves? The bus was three blocks away. How fast could I sprint it? Thinking any longer than that would have made making the bus impossible. I shut the thoughts out and set off sprinting.
I was wearing jeans, sneakers that hurt my feet since I hadn’t changed out the insoles, and sunglasses that threatened to fall off my face. But still, the air rushing through my hair and lungs, the sun beaming down on me, the feeling of floating on top of the concrete and maneuvering the numerous dips and tricks that a New York City sidewalk presents, made me feel so deliriously happy with myself. By the time I got to the bus it had started leaving, but even though it was already in motion, I knew that I could chase it down. I kept going, and soon after the bus driver stopped. When I got on, I jokingly asked if he didn’t see me running after the bus and he laughed. He saw me. He just wanted to see if I would keep going. And I said to myself, blessed are the bus drivers who stop for you when they see you running after them.