6/19/2014

I am walking home through Central Park and I am doing so intentionally.  I am trying to savor, whatever that word means.  This is my final commute home, and I am trying to make it last.

The sky is salmon and with all the the violence that an upstream fish suggests, it is saturated and colorized and something has to give.  It should not surprise you that I am thinking of prologue, of delicate equilibriums and their inevitable destructions.  When I reach the Harlem Meer, when I climb those rocks overlooking the water, I get what I asked for, or at least what I predicted.  The salmon gives in and the rain begins, almost apologetic in its victory, large, atom bomb raindrops, sure, but only the minimum amount to get the job done.  It prevents further movement but it accepts your surrender.  I stand under an oak and I lay down my weapons.

And there it is, a moment worth savoring, whatever that word means.  I look to the north, to Lenox Avenue, to the intersection of Central Park North and Lenox and Saint Nicholas, I look to that beautiful triangle of four story brick buildings and absurd liquor store neon and crowds running in rain and walking under umbrellas and that sky, that salmon’s northern battle with rainclouds, and the shadows of the drops which are large enough to name and it is a moment, that’s what it is, it is a dimming worth memorializing in, it is an apocalypse, and it deserves to last forever.

It won’t, though.  Even now, describing it to you, I lose some of it.  And even if I remain here in reverence, it will end, the rainclouds will win or the salmon will, or night will overwhelm the both of them.  And even if I shut my eyes and imagine it forever, preserve it on my retinas for the rest of my days, I will still lose it, I will be distracted by other things or else I will die.  This scene does not last forever and neither do I.

This is growing sappy, it is growing literary, even.  “The natural progression of time is happening to me, and also to my parents, just like it has happened to everyone and their parents from the beginning of recorded history, but this time it’s different.” Mallory is right.  But maybe this is different, or at least it’s mine.  This is purchasing my 1999 Chevy in 2009, it’s not new, but it’s new to me.  So I stare at this sky and this scene at these people, and I know I cannot keep them, and I look into my empty palm where I expected to see a fistful of sand.