Guide my feet as I run dis race..

People say Sunday is the NYC Marathon and I say oh oh, I hope I could avoid it .. thinking the marathon is a big thing. But there is a calling for church and I find myself, waking up early, getting ready and jumping in a train and then coming out and wondering as I walk to my favourite Brooklyn church about how I used to wonder about how people in Guyana travel for miles past other churches, mandirs and masjids to go to their favourite ones when there is no need really.

Marathon is just outside the church. There are blue lines which nobody seems to bother with. The drums are drumming loud and the pastor in church pauses now and then as voices raise as people see their friends outside.

The church was part of the underground rail road. I had finished reading Isabel Allende's Island Beneath the Sea , which was about the period of slavery.

One of the hymns was Guide my feet - I don't know if it was selected for the race outside.



Church is over and people come out to watch the marathon runners. The drumming is intense. Lots of hand clapping and the runners are coming.  The race in the hymn might have been the escape of the enslaved.

A lot of people in the race, Dressed in all colours and costumes. Not too many black people though or "people of colour". A friend later tells me later, that black people and poor people don't generally run the marathon. A lot of money comes in from visitors who come to run the marathon.


Lunch in a diner. Two black police having their brunch near to me. I feel that I should be on my best behaviour. They are talking not quietly. They are looking at the TV and I look and listen to them watching the TV. The winners of the marathon are from Kenya and Ethiopia. I had passed another yawning officer bracing up near the fence of another church. Marathon day must be annoying for them.


One of the cops says 'So, I bet you will never run the marathon'. The other cop , says no.. while he takes a chocolate covered doughnut from a plastic bag.

In the subway coming back, a woman next to me is singing, and humming.. singing loud. First time I had heard any passenger singing in the subway.  I thought she had on headphones but no. She is singing the first two lines of 'There is power in the name of Jesus, break every chain, break every chain' . She has some cardboard with Christmas patterns and she is folding as she sings.





I start humming with her.. and singing in a low voice, thinking it would be a nice thing to do in case people think she is mad for being on her own and thinking of the couple of minibus rides when I started singing to change de dutty music. She does not seem to notice and I come off at my stop.