16 April

Dreaming Of The 2014 Boston Marathon. My Sweet Dream

by Jon Katz
The Boston Marathon
Grave Marker, Grafton, Vermont
Dreaming Of The Marathon
Dreaming Of The Marathon

This is not a news site, and I have nothing to add to the great machine spitting out news and not news every second everywhere. But I am thinking a lot about the Marathon. And I had a dream about it and I wanted to share it.

I grew up around Boston and lived there for awhile and and saw a number of Marathons as a child and an adult. The Marathon was part of a great Spring coming out for that city, a festival more than a sporting event. Everybody in Boston went at one time or another.  There was a parade, a Red Sox game, talks and readings near the Old North Church, picnics on the Charles. It is an intensely Democratic kind of event, for more than 100 years the very antithesis of the Corporate, Tail-Gaiting, Pontificating, Commercialized Chicken Wing Fest and  Advertising Overkill that is called the Super Bowl.

Only a few runners have a chance of winning, but many thousands enter, old people, people in wheelchairs, foreigners, aging athletes, old ladies, runners and strivers from all over the world,  all cheered out by the hundreds of thousands of people who line the route, hand out water, cheer them on. For some, the Marathon is a sporting event, but for most it is a chance to show what determination and heart mean.

And it’s free. Is there any other kind of sporting event like that in our corporatized world? I was away in Vermont, just turned the Ipad on to check my e-mail and was bombarded with Facebook notifications, alerts and gongs. I saw that  something was up and looked at the news and like so many of you, my heart just sank. I didn’t sleep much, but when I did, I dreamed about the Marathon I knew, and then I had this dream about next year’s Marathon. It was a sweet dream, an uplifting dream.

My dream is simple.

That at every press conference, every leader, spurred on by millions of people,  decided that the Marathon be preserved for 2014. That is not be turned over to security people in their specialized units, that it not be only about revenge, new security procedures, insurance regulations, posturing politicians, legislators seeking favor,  lawsuits, Homeland Security issuing alerts. In my dream, we didn’t let the lawyers and the underwriters and security bureaucrats do to us what they did after 911 and let this most innocent and inclusive of things, this spirit of a place, be walled up and searched, carded and monitored, videod and regulated, unnerved and humiliated, cannibalized by the Fear and Security Machine, two of our greatest growth industries.

What a sweet dream, that  we all decided to make the bravest and most powerful kind of statement to the world that there is, which is that we are an open and free people who cannot be frightened and warned out of our way of life, and we will all do what we need to do to keep things like the Marathon part of our collective culture and soul, even if means lining the whole 26 mile route with people, soldiers, volunteers standing arm-in-arm to keep the runners safe and to remind the world what strength really is. I’ll go.

In my dream, we all decided to win a war like this not only with soldiers and wars and drones and commandos but with spirit and a collective determination that bombs cannot kill free will. In my dream, our leaders did compete with one another to exploit death and fear. Instead of frightening us, they reassured us, and urged us to remember the values we cherish the most. They helped inspire us to keep the things we most love about our country, that make us a light to the world when we are at our best. Like taking our shoes off only when we want to, moving freely throughout our world and coming together in great festivals of affirmation.  I would love to volunteer in a war like that, that would get me off of my farm and running to Boston in a heartbeat.

In my dream of 2014, hundreds of thousands, no millions of people, lined the Marathon route, cheering on the thousands of runners, hold up candles and photos in remembrance of the people who died and were hurt and showing the world that their suffering would be honored as well as mourned.

I woke up from my dream and looked  at the news. Was my dream already shattered?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Email SignupFree Email Signup