Maria Arozamena
After a day of class, I feel at loose ends.
I am drifting through the mid-afternoon, desperately needing to create a mental break between the torrent of classes earlier in the day and the studying that awaits me later. Zipping up my purple Nike jacket and curling my hands into fists to keep them warm, I go for a run.
I started running only in my senior year of high school, but my route from Silliman College through the East Rock neighborhood is familiar now, after five or six months at school: it begins with a gentle incline up Prospect Street until the steep section of Science Hill slaps me. But I know it’ll level out around the Yale Farm, then the Divinity School — and then I’m out of Yale. As comforting as campus is, I feel free once I am taken out of my usual scenery and see houses and front lawns.
When I run, I forget any little problems that turn my mind in dizzy circles. Any stress from classes, friends, the laundry I haven’t done — gone, once I’m focused on the rhythm of my feet on the concrete. Sometimes I run on the treadmill, but it’s a cagey feeling. When I’m outdoors, I go at my own pace, speeding up as I remember that aggravating moment I had earlier, working through the frustration with every footstep. Wind brushes against my face, the air fresh, crisp and biting.
After a while, I turn onto Huntington Street, where East Rock always peeks through the trees — at this time of year, the branches are scraggly and it’s easy to see the prominent red cliff face, dusted with snow and glowing nobly in the afternoon light. I exhale and relax at the sight of it, and I know the downhill portion of the run is about to start. It’s all familiar to me now.
This path is my own — it almost feels like my own neighborhood. The terrible intersection at the bottom of Huntington is mine, along with the nice houses of East Rock Road and the pedestrian-only road at the base of the rock itself, which canopied by trees and bordered by the river on one side. Orange Street, blessedly flat, is mine, with its cute triple-deckers, stores and apartment buildings.
The sun sets as I go, and streams of cars pass me, commuters on their way home, their headlights matching the pink and orange of the fading sky. The colors are pale and raw, and the sky connects to something within me, something that aches to be clean and free of my daily troubles.
Couples take after-work walks around me, pushing strollers or corralling dogs on leashes, and grad students trek home from campus. I know I am a mere observer of their lives, watching cogs in a foreign system. But it’s beautiful. As opposed to the rhythm of my life at Yale — the swarm of people at the crosswalk outside the Schwarzman Center, the trickle from the Humanities Quadrangle at the end of classes — I see how a totally different swath of New Haven lives.
Sometimes I imagine I live in East Rock too. It’s refreshing to pretend that instead of going back to my dorm, with its standard couch, desk, and bed, I will finish my run by heading to my second-floor triple-decker apartment. Maybe I would pick up a coffee from the cafe at the corner, or some classy snacks from the little market nearby. It’s fun to imagine, as I wound my way across Church Street and Temple Street, eventually hauling open the Silliman courtyard door.
When I return from my run, I’m exhausted, refreshed. I stand in the courtyard for a moment, watching the end of the sunset hit the Chase Bank building behind Timothy Dwight College. Life’s issues are put into perspective, and it doesn’t matter whether I haven’t finished my readings for class tomorrow. I find myself distanced, zoomed out. As I trek up my five flights of stairs, I look forward to the sunset glow that I know will wash across my common room, to the music I’ll listen to in the shower.
Maybe I’m not living out my fantasy as a grad student in East Rock. But Yale isn’t too bad either.