Good afternoon, beloved —
Please accept my apologies, both in that this should have reached you last Sunday, and for the relative brevity of today's dispatch. I've been struggling with a shitty cold for the past ten days or so — non-COVID, thank all the gods below, but entirely vexatious enough nonetheless — and it's really been putting a crimp into my already-hobbled ability to read, think and write.
I might well have been on the upswing by now, but for that last Sunday was the Hackney Half, and I chose to run into the developing cold instead of opting for rest and self-care as I probably should have. I couldn't resist, really; this is a race I'd signed up for in the Time Before, more or less ignored through multiple postponements, and only really started paying attention to when I got a reminder email that they were finally going ahead with it two weeks out. This was enough time for me to get four proper training runs in, culminating in an eleven-mile outing the Wednesday before, and I really didn't want that effort to be for nought. (Here again is the sunk-cost fallacy at work, I suppose.)
In the end, I wound up doing better than I expected despite my cold, knocking the half-marathon down in 2:12 on the strength of what was clearly a fairly vestigial training regime, and really enjoying the experience besides. The wonderful thing about running through Hackney is that there's a fond memory in just about every mile: that’s the pub where I met my friend Padmini the last time she was in town, that's the building where a woman Nurri’s considering hiring as an editor on her film threw a party that time, there’s the shop where I bought my bedside reading lamp, there’s where Throbbing Gristle’s squat used to be, there’s the Argentinian steakhouse I took Usman for his birthday a few years back, the butcher/wineshop where Nurri took me on my fiftieth, there’s the Lou Reed mural, that’s the spot where we got high before heading back into the annual Chaos Theory all-day/all-night doom metal festival, u.s.w. u.s.w. So many embedded traces, so much love and joy woven into the very fabric of the place — it's enough and more than enough to light a fire under your ass, when the spirit starts flagging somewhere past the eleven-mile mark.
But then of course there's the comedown, and the knowledge that you’ve probably bought yourself an extra few days recovering in bed. Ah well. It's worth it, right?
§ So listen. I just booked my first overseas travel in almost two years. Frankly, it's doing my head in, but if you're planning to be in Seoul in mid-November, Helsinki on the 10th of that month, or Madrid during the first two weeks of December, please do let me know, the latter most especially. (Madrid's a proper research trip and that; during the day I'll be doing interviews pursuant to my PhD project on municipalism, but will otherwise be delighted to meet up for pints, or Rioja and solomillo, as the case may be).
§ I'm reading not a damn thing longer than the average Instagram caption; listening to a metric fuckton of tasty John Zorn music (Masada, Bar Kokhba, etc.) he won’t let Spotify get their mitts on, as well as a comparable volume of Bill Laswell-produced material of which the same is true; and watching (cough) Homeland.
Until next time: please remember to take care of yourself and those who need you, and to let yourself be taken care of. You have, as ever,
all my faith,
ag
ldn
This is Dispatch from London No. 113 of Sunday, 3 October 2021, offered to you under the terms of a Peer Production License. You are free to reuse this content, but must acknowledge Adam Greenfield as its author. ◊