Tuesday 2.15

Before I pulled back the curtain I knew it was raining but then a sparrow called and I knew I'd been wrong. Bright clouds blew across the courtyard shaft. My New Balance had to stay stuffed with paper. My jeans had dried hung in the shower and didn't even itch.

Two women opened Dana Discovery Center. The one driving a golf cart in circles stopped. Silent attraction seemed to flow between us. The other smoked and rinsed rubber floormats. Wind made it cold for khaki ecologist suits.

A cross-eyed girl shouted Morning! I couldn't tell if there was someone behind me. On the way past I said Hello, twice, but she stared off gulping air. The pond at 110^th (The Harlem Meer) is so reflective sometimes. Christo's Gates had been up since Saturday. Last night I finally got to see them (in dismal circumstances: heavy bag, broken umbrella, damp socks and gloves).

In all the Conservatory Gardens only one cluster of snowdrops had bloomed. Slender green shoots looked strong. Patchy light came through the trellis.

As a jogger emitting techno beats curved beside the baseball fields I thought about vicarious emotional momentum. She had glossy dark hair. So many people use expensive hair products now.

Somebody with leashes wrapped around one wrist sat with his face in a Daily News. People must always bug him about what it's like to be a dog walker. No squirrels in sight, I noted, because of storms. I was forgetting my initial discomfort with Christo's drapes (of course they have to be durable). I watched the wind billow, fabric unfurl. It felt like standing under women's thighs.

Three poodles passed while I stood thinking. The drabbest of them looked up. It drew in breath but just shivered. Sirens helped maintain a muffled morning feeling. I imagined a neighbor hearing it all from his room—under blankets with the window open. I waited for a brownish jay to pivot. I guess I really wanted a blue jay. A heart-shaped balloon staggered between currents, sailed out across East Meadow airspace.

A tattered ice sheet looked about to split from The Pool's shore. (In the Conservatory Gardens bulletin bin I'd found a complimentary Central Park Anniversary Map & Guide subtitled 150 Years Of Strolling: Priceless. That's where I'm getting all these proper names.) Always at least one mallard paused, staring out where water began. Inevitably the bird would plop except that word's not right: this was all very quiet.

A setter winked while carrying a crooked stick. I wanted to say It looks like he's smoking a pipe but didn't know if the dog was a he or she. This occurred as I wound up Great Hill (West 104^th). By then the park had filled with compact invigorated people. Frizzy high-school girls sped south. The blonde's make-up resembled a charcoal sketch. For the second time this morning I wondered why I can't hold my gaze on unattractive strangers (just to be polite).

Most moms wore jackets not a raincoat like me. (When I'd first crossed 110^th, at 8:06, cars' tires kicked up iridescent dew so that they looked stationary for a second, like fountains.) The muddiest stretches weren't soggy anymore. In the North Woods large white men leaned against a golf cart dozing. Both flinched when I appeared. I willed myself to make eye contact, just to will something, but my stare never left the trail.

Skirting Lenox I almost collided with a woman when boys refused to step beyond crosswalk paint. I felt jammed, and, amidst the confusion, saw the sign for Second Canaan Baptist Church. I'd voted for president at Second Canaan, had never looked in that direction since.

Back inside (9:12) it sounded like an aviary. Now (10:10) there's only one periodic caw. Our showerhead's leaking. Lamps look tilted in the window reflection.

Wednesday

Kristin says my metabolism will slow if I don't eat anything until after walking and writing about it: so first a quick bowl of yogurt, granola, almonds.

Kristin woke us around 8:15. Both eyes looked puffy when I put in contacts. Dahlias spread before me as the elevator opened. I held the door for neighbors and an Eskimo dog. We said Hi but never looked at each other—my vision just blurred to the left. It was unseasonably hot (like every winter now) on Greenwich. One coffee-colored woman wore a creamy bell-shaped dress and housefly sunglasses. Her heels tied at the ankles.

All down Murray cabs kept slamming shut; I only noticed because there weren't any sirens. I appreciated that standpipes look so brassy and antique. In a warehouse someone slid cases of Coke and Sprite off a handcart. Somebody with a hard hat tucked a blueprint in his pocket. Delivery guys on West St. relaxed in the front of a warm bright van. The driver laid his boots along the dashboard. A Post sprawled in his lap. 12 year-olds pranced by in boutique denim.

Powerball tickets clotted a puddle. Sprayed orange arrows pointed across the river. The Hudson rocked a bit—wrinkled, calm. Saws buzzed all around me. To the right stood a raw uneven stump with someone straddling its limbs. Along the Irish Hunger Memorial arcs of aspens lay toppled. A tree had been boxed by a wooden scaffold. I turned to the water and tried to speak spontaneously and this is basically what came: New Jersey you can be so hard to see, though your air caresses my face, reminding me I have one, but why must it feel like a leather mask?

A Starbucks cup would have blown in the harbor if it hadn't been left almost full. Commuters disembarked from a Hoboken Ferry. The men looked symmetrical (how they dressed). The women's clicking heels made it hard to look at them and concentrate. Pylons leaned against each other resembling nymphs or redwoods.

I slowed passing fir trees. The holocaust-memorial site sat quiet. Geese picked through its fenced-off yard.

Right where the Battery curves, right where you can see storms coming or the edge of night, someone with a big skull stood wanting to say hello. I said Good morning (first, so it wouldn't seem reciprocal). Sun spread across his face. No words came from him. A man reading the Wall Street Journal also reminded me of sun. A lot of benches looked freshly painted, wet even, wind-streaked. Branches had budded way too early.

Bronze hands reached out from the river. Somebody thrust above her bangs a plastic replica of the Liberty torch. Someone spray-painted copper green straddled her. Souris! the girl's mother cried. But she just stared, austere and proud, posing less for her parents than her own children. Arabic men arranged pretzel carts. Particular shelves produced steamy puffs: like warm patches you come across swimming. Silhouettes crossed Staten Island Ferry windows.

On the way back someone bowed and chanted amidst circles of D-sized batteries. A tidy Native American slept. He sat almost straight, wore woolen gloves. Garbage bags rested along his thighs.

Closer to Murray somebody olive-skinned had huge white blotches between his nose and mouth. I only stared on my second chance (right when we passed). I thought I heard frogs. It was the warning sound as garage gates shut. A chauffeur rushed from the Resident Suites apologizing. A porter yelled Remove your vehicle. I stepped too deeply off the curb. A bubble in my back got twisted.

Thursday

After bhindi masala I awoke with shaky bowels. Bring two dollars I thought, while rinsing a contact, In case there's a bathroom for customers only. But at the corner I realized I'd forgotten the money.

I'd never gone east from our apartment and so at 8:06 I turned that way. Cops tilted chins to check me out through facemasks. I tried to imprint on my memory people's posture at the bus stop, the way Degas would. I crossed beneath an LIRR—right where a boy once shocked my ex-roommate with a sticky, pushy slap that strained his neck. During one crazy gust a garbage bag and I bound towards each other like long lost friends. There were few broken bottles, more milk-top rings. There were waves of children's laughter but no visible kids.

Supermarket discount pages lay frozen. In a puddle hung a Post headline: The Lyin' King. An Hispanic woman asked how it was her 9-year-old goddaughter could explain sex. Parents walked as far as a school gate. Beyond the fence mini-basketballs flew almost always without the necessary arc. Sparrows zigzagged around stiff adults. Four girls and one boy squatted tearing paper, discussing life.

From a dusty park of mismatch chairs poked a Puerto Rican flag (which I always confuse with Texas). Locked to long crates perched a fifteen-foot tricycle painted like a grasshopper. Its plastic cover ripped where wind pressed against peddles.

Fringe flapped outside a deli as a woman stepped down, slow but intrepid on her three-pronged cane. A tossed mattress depicted fauna where it wasn't torn by coil. All around stone crumbled. White people smirked. None seemed attractive.

110^th ended on Thomas Jefferson Park: just baseball diamonds and a corridor. A squirrel stared then panicked. With traffic purring and the sky absent of color winter in the city felt calm and private. Across a footbridge the East River stirred, glimmering and consistent, thick but not unclean. Across water I saw more fences—Riker's Island maybe. Below, somebody black chased his german shepherd. It felt like a seagull's point of view (there weren't any).

I couldn't understand Ward's Island Bridge unless there was a hidden elevator or stairs. Something told me That bridge is useless; enjoy this humble pier. Yet I continued south, neglecting the pier. Only when a cormorant popped up did I realize nothing had been happening for a while, and even then the syllables for cormorant wouldn't cohere in my head. Another bird, some type of Japanese duck—stark white with jagged orange and gray—slipped off the embankment. It shook strands of fuzz from its beak to better peck at the river surface. You are beautiful I cried. The closest pigeons spread dramatically striped tail-feathers. What is all this? I asked one. A pair of Asian men stopped to retie shoes. I disliked overtaking them that way.

A project's yard stood filled with plastic animals: holy deer kneeling, elephants and owls. When I slowed to look a live great dane bore down on me like a stallion. Several blocks later I read an unofficial plaque mounted to one handball court. The boy in the photo appeared gaunt and pony-tailed. There was a poem or something lineated in Spanish. Without fully pausing I resumed my vigorous pace, felt guilty for grinning as I'd approached this shrine.

A lot of balconies had hanging bikes. Others were stuffed with washed-out boxes. On my walk back to Central Park I trailed an old akita and a woman crying. Christo's Gates split it all into a thousand fresh particles. I joined the informal press tour.

In the Conservatory Gardens two tree trunks got sawed. I wondered if we face an arboreal blight so far only discussed in the Metro Section. For some reason I wouldn't ask the groundskeeper. I inspected logs in her pick-up. Many felt hollow. On the way through trellises, down toward the lawn, I saw a blue jay then a sultry female cardinal.

Friday

From the gloom I couldn't find my phone (my "watch"). At 8:32 for the first time ever I turned up Lenox (Malcolm X). Solids became outlines blasted with sun. My eyes wouldn't grasp anything specific. Soon children streamed by in well-organized columns bearing bright, well-sculpted faces. A cat arched its spine in a laundromat window. A green Lincoln with hazards flashing roared then swerved around me. A maroon Cadillac's taillight blinked as if the alarm was about to sound. Pigeon flocks swirled overhead and I felt curved and scattered. One stray feather straggled behind.

Letters in the sign for Lloyd Toppin Funeral Home hung tilted crooked like funny teeth. As I approached 125^th the way one Asian woman filled her pants seemed hypnotizing (but not sexual). Lampposts looked huge against blank sky. Barehanded Hispanic boys passed each other sinks. Somebody peeked from a window with tubes up his nostrils. Sparrows could be heard everywhere.

I'd started to feel menaced by looming projects. A mom looked both admiring and afraid of the pit bull she pushed her daughter past. This close-cropped dog somehow turned me on. Kids wore bandannas beside a Checks Cashed place. But in the next band of so-called intimidating kids the fiercest bragged about acing biology. Crowds flowed off the subway steps. The "menacing projects" were a Columbia hospital. The city had grown faceless.

To the west sat several wiry parks (Morningside, St. Nicholas). I was moving slowly: 25 blocks in 20 minutes. It wasn't even that slow a pace but I told myself it was. I told a pigeon You are imperturbable.

When my eyes began tearing I said Hello to one family. An elderly woman stepped down her stoop. I paused so she could continue without fear of a crash. She stopped, smiled, waved me on.

Dead firs stood embayed in black iron plots but how beautiful, always, near St. Nick's. I passed a Make My Cake bakery and realized it's a chain. A plaque celebrated benevolent doctors. Another recalled the story of Striver's Row. I wondered if I'd made a spectacle of myself (standing around reading while the block gentrified). City College now looked Teutonic. Too bad there was no brook to cross.

Puffy boys peered out from trails' ends. I couldn't see their faces. Police tape whipped around in benches. A light toe-press burst air pockets lacing one puddle, so that after these exquisite cracks ice remained and my shoes weren't wet.

A retired Filipino kicked his floppy dogs forward as they lay bewildered on the frozen lawn. Something about how this man's clothes fit suggested satisfaction with life. The park seemed to have been designed so you wouldn't notice leaving. I stepped on nail clippers. Flurries picked up.

On the way home I went berserk: letting traffic dictate what streets I took. I've needed new shoes since December but only today did my foot-soles start ripping. Men refurbished a townhouse without any facade. The clouds were just more brownstones. I wanted to scream Soon we will be moving into such clouds! but by then sidewalks stood packed. The first of many sirens rang. The only yard I saw would have been big enough to lie in if not for a sewer.

Back on Lenox African names brought pleasure but reading street signs quickly corroded my sense of self. Back on my own block somebody asked the muttering white person ahead to purchase a Final Call. No one asked me. Workers dragged pipes to the building next door. So this spring also there will be intense construction.