Seasons' turning.
Feb. 28th, 2021 09:31 pmYesterday I'd planned on a morning bike ride. I'd known it'd rain in the morning and clear up in the afternoon. Didn't matter: the morning was biking time. I made it two blocks before calling it off. Between muscle aches and getting wet, I didn't want to do it anymore.
I didn't want to stay inside, either. So I knocked another thing off my winter to-do list, and took a walk through Riverside Park. Last week, I went through Central Park while it was still full of snow, but a week's long enough it was mostly gone. There was still plenty of water around: stubborn sluice, hard-packed large-form crystals, puddles and ponds, plus all the rain and mist. Gray and wet all around, no shadows, no sunlight, heavy and wearying.
It was perfect.
Because there was no one else in the park. Practically no one. I walked about thirty blocks north and thirty blocks back, getting wet from the rain, stepping in ankle-deep puddles by accident, not quite cold enough to be miserable but pretty much entirely by myself. There were a few people who were usually a few dozen to a couple hundred feet away. Only a handful of incidental encounters where someone got close enough to be worth waving to. And in this day and age, that meant safely walking around outside without a mask.
What a way to live on the edge.
It was safe, though. Nobody around, nobody close by. Breezes and fresh air, rain clearing the sky. I took the mask off and took deep breaths, letting my skin feel the rain and the cold, absolutely loving being by myself, alone by choice. It wasn't entirely a flat sky: when I stopped to look at it, I could see the texture and patterns in the low-hanging clouds, all those subtle shades of silver and gray. I wouldn't have gotten that if I'd waited. I'd just have gone on a sunny bike ride, which would have been fun by itself. But it wouldn't have let me get out into the world and walk in it a while, looking at winter slowly fading, one raindrop at a time.
Today had its own share of moments of good timing: managing to get some knives sharpened by a man in a truck with a Brooklyn accent strong enough to get poured into a Jell-O mold who called me "young lady" and the dazzling combination of timing and blind luck to get a vaccine appointment.
I didn't want to stay inside, either. So I knocked another thing off my winter to-do list, and took a walk through Riverside Park. Last week, I went through Central Park while it was still full of snow, but a week's long enough it was mostly gone. There was still plenty of water around: stubborn sluice, hard-packed large-form crystals, puddles and ponds, plus all the rain and mist. Gray and wet all around, no shadows, no sunlight, heavy and wearying.
It was perfect.
Because there was no one else in the park. Practically no one. I walked about thirty blocks north and thirty blocks back, getting wet from the rain, stepping in ankle-deep puddles by accident, not quite cold enough to be miserable but pretty much entirely by myself. There were a few people who were usually a few dozen to a couple hundred feet away. Only a handful of incidental encounters where someone got close enough to be worth waving to. And in this day and age, that meant safely walking around outside without a mask.
What a way to live on the edge.
It was safe, though. Nobody around, nobody close by. Breezes and fresh air, rain clearing the sky. I took the mask off and took deep breaths, letting my skin feel the rain and the cold, absolutely loving being by myself, alone by choice. It wasn't entirely a flat sky: when I stopped to look at it, I could see the texture and patterns in the low-hanging clouds, all those subtle shades of silver and gray. I wouldn't have gotten that if I'd waited. I'd just have gone on a sunny bike ride, which would have been fun by itself. But it wouldn't have let me get out into the world and walk in it a while, looking at winter slowly fading, one raindrop at a time.
Today had its own share of moments of good timing: managing to get some knives sharpened by a man in a truck with a Brooklyn accent strong enough to get poured into a Jell-O mold who called me "young lady" and the dazzling combination of timing and blind luck to get a vaccine appointment.
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