Parkour and Freedom

From high atop the Westin tower Seattle sits quiet and neat in the pale darkness. My friends and I stand at the edge, hands linked, waiting for the arrival of dawn, a gem of gold hidden just over the freeway and behind the slumbering rich of Capitol Hill. "Listen," I say in a tight whisper, "You`ve all been down in the streets at night, huddled in the cold. You know the hatred which can rise, born from the alleyways and doorways of a ill city. I`ve been there. I`ve been so hungry i can`t think, so tired I can`t act and so weary I took to drinking and drugs. But this is the same for all of us. I say forget all of that, right now, right this moment. Leave it behind and there`s no limit to how fast you can run and how high you can jump. I say find something to love down there; find the meaning in that humanity and all that steel and glass." They all looked at me, wry smiles at the remembrance of the past and honest knowledge of how hard the fight for the future would be. They were young men and women like me, sick to death of the pit we had dug ourselves into and always sliding back down no matter how hard we struggled up. But this was to be a new day for them, a new beginning. I was their leader in a way; showing them a way out and up and, ironically, over the barriers to a new life. For we were free-runners, a philosophy that existed in other forms all over the world; sadly as a sport called Parkour in France. Tattooed on our middle finger was the motto and creed of our awakening; a simple reasoning through which I gained control over my fate: "Run to Exist."

"In the dark the city exists only in pieces, a single street here, a corner of a building there; existing in our minds incomplete and so without the clear understanding of the true creature it is. When the sun rises in a few moments look about you. This is the true face of our city, its best and most glorious. Hold this in your minds for the future, hold it fast for the times when you may find yourself sunk in the grime and lost in the smallness of it all. Remember these moments."

As I had been talking the sky had lightened gradually and then seemed to burst with whiteness as the sun drew nearer. Since my new beginning I had seen every single sunrise from here and let none fade in the intensity of its enjoyment. So it was the same with this one; it was like the first and best, and the moment the first rays leaped out to paint the cityscape it was the only one I had ever known. The golden beams continued to strengthen, throwing back the darkness. I looked to my friends faces and saw the same thoughts blazing through them. "Such freshness upon their faces," I thought, "its as if we`re all allowed an innocence of being at these raw moments of time." The orb hung full in the sky, blazing out shafts of light that were reflected in the windows and metal surfaces, the eyes of the city. But in the eyes of those standing around were reflected the final understanding: finally connecting the sights, sounds and smells of a lifetime spent in its belly to the whole magnificence laid out before them.

Time to begin, I thought, looking down at the ledges and rails that would lead down to the neighboring building. My eyes followed a path down and out-along rooftops, over big gaps, along sky bridges and spiraling down many, many walls to reach Gas Works park, the rusted-brown top barely sticking out above the city`s shadow. There, beneath its pipes and wheels, we would meet in three hours. My muscles twitched and pulsed as I visualized the moves I would need to flow from one point to the next. Finally, in my mind a balance was reached; a balance point between all the emotions that could drag me down. "Time to run," I said.