Meditations on the day trip to NYC for writing workshop… October 21, 2017
Full dark when I got on the train. The light came up slowly. Fist I could see the lightening sky reflected in the river, then light hit the hills on the other shore as the sun rose. I like the view from the train—parts of the Hudson you never see from the road,: back yards, boat docks, a rusting iron stairway to nowhere that ends above the water. Then, entering the city underground. I see the backs of buildings, the nooks and crannies of the city that only the homeless and the taggers come to know intimately.
The walk from Penn Station—crossing countless invisible boundaries, traveling through many zones into the rarified air of Central Park West. I see dogs, trashpickers, doormen, a man sleeping on a bench down in Central Park—take his photo with my 30X zoom to bear witness. I document ornate carvings, a ballerina striking poses in the intersection while the light is red, a man wheeling what I think is a stringed bass in a red case. The hawk I saw soaring above 90thstreet, in and out of Central Park airspace did not slow enough for me to capture an image.
I keep walking, grateful to be walking boldly up the avenue in a city that once terrified me. While I am walking, I realize it will be 50 years in July 2018 from the time my life was divided into before and after by trauma, in another part of this city. I am HERE-in this city on this blazing blue October morning in the elder third of my life, walking fast up 8th Avenue along the park. I breathe, listen, look at tree shadows and feel wonder, gratitude, peace. All the while, my camera and my spirit are taking snapshots.