Once upon a time, when I was a young sprout, a friend of mine sent me a pair of Roz Chast cartoons which he said reminded him of me. One was "The Sensitive Child," which showed a child taunting the bullies advancing on him with "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will live on and on in my head, turning them over until I lose all sense of proportion." He had a point with that one, but I still think he was wrong to say I reminded him of "Pollyanna in Hell." ("Wow! No more down jackets *ever*!"
Or at least I did until yesterday. Yesterday morning, on a day off from the box factory, I woke from my midmorning nap, prettied myself up, and stepped outside for an adventure in Manhattan. It hit me as soon as I opened the front door. I am no stranger to humidity, and I accept it as part of the package deal of living in a major metropolitan East Coast city, but oy, that's a lot of humidity. The sky was bright white, as if it were unsure whether or not to start raining. The air was thick and hazy, a sure sign of a pollution advisory day. Hot town, summer in the city, sigh.
Then I got off the subway at 57th Street, caught an uptown bus and rode up the Upper West Side to 72nd Street. I am not about to argue that pollutants make a place more beautiful, but I could not deny that there was something otherworldly about the soft white light seeping through Verdi Square, making everything look soft and peaceful. Verdi Square, also known by its more notorious moniker of bygone times, Needle Park, yesterday looked as soft and still as a newborn baby. The entire city did, actually, even with the usual contingent of crowds and noises. I could have stood on Broadway between 72nd and 73rd, just looking at the park, for a week. It was the same feeling I had nearly two hours later, having returned home, looking at the weird white light bouncing off the Triborough, the Hell Gate, the railroad overpass, the whitewashed building on the corner of 31st Street and 23rd Avenue. I walked to the Freeze Peach, I sat down and had my tea, and I noticed that Astoria was in the swing of high summer, the kind that covers the neighborhood in grape leaves. As long as I live, I will never tire of seeing them, never.
