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THE MARATHON
The marathon – Pheidippides comes to Athens on the sidewalks, not running – he will run later. The Athens today is an Atheneum town – Boston, Boson, it’s MIT, Am I thee? The message of fortytwo and oneninefive kilometers runs much farther – Checenya – and much closer – American citizenship – or better: it comes from the infinite distance between the two, it never stopped running, it never stopped laughing at surveillance cameras, it never stopped making fun of neckbearded vigilantes trying to spot their impossible ideal between the crowd: he who wants to be spotted – sunglasses, a cap, the final stretch of a run without end – more a corsa,as in curse, recursive, a malediction in italic script, slanted, as the runner always in danger of losing his steps. Losing his trace – the police – and losing their legs – the simulacra of historicized marathons, abstracted from war and now absolutely empty, vilifying: I ran all the way from my birth to my unnoticed deaths – you will never run again between these empty poles of vanity. The wail of a sudden, repeated, syncopating blast: the Persians of the mind have been defeated again, yet their spirit lives – this is the great, unheard news. νενικηκαμεν’! No-one will ever hear this cry in the millisecond filled with a shockwave. His antioedipal tire-screech over the corpse of his brother, despite the claims of brainwashing. The absolute light of the last possible Annunciation: “we have won, long ago, yet I will shoot myself in the throat and never tell you about it”. Tsarnaev state of mind – a gun to the carotid, hiding in a life raft in the middle of a residential garden, as a wounded animal – the last breathing human in a gathering of dogs.
