just some thoughts

Flipping channels:

I have decided that when walking down the street in New York it is like flipping channels on the TV. I hear snippets of people’s conversations and I associate them with channels. Here is a few:

“I am just tired or pretending…”----Oxygen or Lifetime

“Help out the victims of Katrina”---CNN, Fox, MSNBC etc.

“So who won the tennis match….”---ESPN

“Help out the poor, just a penny man…..”---CBN (or whatever it is called now-the family channel or something”

Crazy people everywhere:

Fifteen years ago (before Giuliani), when New York was scary, if you saw a person walking down the sidewalk talking to themselves, you would think he was crazy. You might even cross the street to avoid him. Today everyone talks to themselves and very few of them are certifiable. Nope! Most of them are everyday people and they are talking everyday people—on their mobile phone!!! It really freaks me out when I am standing on a corner and someone walks up beside me and starts talking. I am startled and I look at them, but they are looking down the street waiting for taxi to pass, but they are still talking to me about the US Open or the dress they bought at Macy’s. I stare at them and wonder what in the world they expect me to say. I don’t know anything about the US Open and I have never been to Macy’s, much less bought a dress there! When they finally realize that I am staring at them waiting for a pause so I can speak, they look at me like I am crazy and cross the road to avoid me! It is at this point that I notice the ear piece. I then I move along on my way and wonder what the dress looked like….

An odd quiet:

New York is a loud place. When you are out during the day you hear a constant stream of horns and sirens and jackhammers and a thousand other sounds. When you are out at night, in the Village at least, there is a constant stream of music flowing from the bars and laughs and greeting raging down the streets. But, I have found that there is a quiet time in the city: the morning. It is not like mornings in the rural south. You don’t wake to the sound of locust or crickets. Here, when you walk around during the morning, there is a heavy quiet. It hangs onto the freshly fixed hair, or the sweaty gym clothes, or the fresh cup from Starbucks. I really can only explain it as humidity. It is the way I felt when I woke up one early morning in the mountains of North Carolina and I sat outside on Aunt Faye’s porch and watched her ancient cat, Fuss (God rest her soul), breath and purr. It is the way I felt when I woke to the gurgle of the Buffalo River in the Ozarks and fog hung over the river basin. The silence of New York is wet and it is heavy.