We
grew in age and love together,
Roaming the forest and the wild;
My breast her shield in wintry weather,
And when the friendly sunshine smiled
And she would mark the opening skies,
I saw no Heaven but in her eyes—
~ Edgar Allan Poe, Tamerlane
Today is the Fourth of July. It is hot, humid, and very, very quiet here in the East Village. The only thing good about being in the city on this day is that most of the degenerate idiots, the hipsters, the fools who live here have gone away for a few days.
I drag my exhausted body out of bed and out to breakfast, then back again. Soon, I would have to shop for a bit of groceries. I leave my apartment and walk toward the Key Food. It was even quieter than before.
I walk over to the schoolyard playground which is empty except for one young mother and her little toddler girl, playing in a small spray fountain. And on a nearby bench sits a deliciously lovely woman of about forty, reading or staring at her phone. She wore a light, airy dress which, with her legs crossed exposed her legs to about halfway up her thighs. Although a somewhat plain looking woman she did have a kind of simple loveliness about her, and a sexiness. I tried not to stare. I wondered how could I start a conversation with her.
Roaming the forest and the wild;
My breast her shield in wintry weather,
And when the friendly sunshine smiled
And she would mark the opening skies,
I saw no Heaven but in her eyes—
~ Edgar Allan Poe, Tamerlane
Today is the Fourth of July. It is hot, humid, and very, very quiet here in the East Village. The only thing good about being in the city on this day is that most of the degenerate idiots, the hipsters, the fools who live here have gone away for a few days.
I drag my exhausted body out of bed and out to breakfast, then back again. Soon, I would have to shop for a bit of groceries. I leave my apartment and walk toward the Key Food. It was even quieter than before.
I walk over to the schoolyard playground which is empty except for one young mother and her little toddler girl, playing in a small spray fountain. And on a nearby bench sits a deliciously lovely woman of about forty, reading or staring at her phone. She wore a light, airy dress which, with her legs crossed exposed her legs to about halfway up her thighs. Although a somewhat plain looking woman she did have a kind of simple loveliness about her, and a sexiness. I tried not to stare. I wondered how could I start a conversation with her.
"No plans for the holiday?"
"Decide to stay home today?"
No, one cannot approach a stranger in the park with lines like these. Then I spotted a ring, and that was that. I turned and stared into the quiet distance.
As if on cue someone started playing a saxophone. I thought, "No one would believe this." But it is true. Here I was, alone, extremely depressed, in this abandoned Lower East Side playground, in the heat of summer day, a holiday no less. Around the country countless of millions of people were at picnics, beaches, boating, playing softball, or just having fun with friends, relatives, loved ones. But here I sat, alone and still sick, still very weak, and of course, extremely sad, to the accompaniment of a lonely, distant saxophone. Right out of a bad Hollywood "B" movie, no?
Her face comes to me at times, at times when I least expect it.
The sexy lady stood and walked out of the grounds with great purpose. I'm sure it was to get away from the strange man sitting diagonally across from her, all alone on the Fourth of July, in an empty children's playground. He was trouble, I'm sure she thought.
After a while I stood and went to sit in the larger cement basketball yard which was open to complete sunlight to sit in the hot sun. I thought it might help clear my lungs. Plus, I wanted to get some Vitamin D. But most of all, I wanted to lose myself in memory of the days I used to play basketball in that very spot, forty years ago. I recalled the noisy mayhem of teens and young men shouting, playing ball, and children running all about. Where were they now? Where were those hail fellows well met? Moose, and Pryce, Turk, and Pete? Where were all those younger children, playing tag, or dodge-ball on the other side of the yard? The little girls screaming as the boys teased them in one playful way or another? I could see their ghosts (and my own), through the dim and choking haze, through the flashes of blistering heat and blinding light that beat on my straining eyes. Did my old friends ever really exist? Did any of it? And all of the hundreds and thousands of children that passed through this one-hundred and twenty year old playground -- were they ever real?
Recalling faces from long ago, I continued to ask, where were my old friends now, almost half-century later? Had they all moved very far away forgetting this small playground, or letting the memories intentionally slip away? I think people do that. If not, did they ever think of it? Do they ever think of me?
Did they have lives? Perhaps even families, children, and grand-children! An amazing thought. Did they live in houses and enjoy holidays together? Did they work hard, and feel justified walking into their homes? And how many were dead? And which ones? Was I really the only fool still here, still holding on to these thoughts of years ago? I wanted to know all this. But the silence, indifferent to my queries, spoke only of today, and only my useless memories brought the once teeming playground back to life.
What a contrast, those days, to the death-like silence of this particular day. No one, not a single person could be found anywhere. I may as well have been in the middle of a desert. Not one child ran, or tossed a ball. There was just the searing heat, the sun, and the silence. I began to sweat. It felt good. I had been indoors so long I had forgotten the feeling.
I dreamt of her last night. She sang to me.
"Decide to stay home today?"
No, one cannot approach a stranger in the park with lines like these. Then I spotted a ring, and that was that. I turned and stared into the quiet distance.
As if on cue someone started playing a saxophone. I thought, "No one would believe this." But it is true. Here I was, alone, extremely depressed, in this abandoned Lower East Side playground, in the heat of summer day, a holiday no less. Around the country countless of millions of people were at picnics, beaches, boating, playing softball, or just having fun with friends, relatives, loved ones. But here I sat, alone and still sick, still very weak, and of course, extremely sad, to the accompaniment of a lonely, distant saxophone. Right out of a bad Hollywood "B" movie, no?
Her face comes to me at times, at times when I least expect it.
The sexy lady stood and walked out of the grounds with great purpose. I'm sure it was to get away from the strange man sitting diagonally across from her, all alone on the Fourth of July, in an empty children's playground. He was trouble, I'm sure she thought.
After a while I stood and went to sit in the larger cement basketball yard which was open to complete sunlight to sit in the hot sun. I thought it might help clear my lungs. Plus, I wanted to get some Vitamin D. But most of all, I wanted to lose myself in memory of the days I used to play basketball in that very spot, forty years ago. I recalled the noisy mayhem of teens and young men shouting, playing ball, and children running all about. Where were they now? Where were those hail fellows well met? Moose, and Pryce, Turk, and Pete? Where were all those younger children, playing tag, or dodge-ball on the other side of the yard? The little girls screaming as the boys teased them in one playful way or another? I could see their ghosts (and my own), through the dim and choking haze, through the flashes of blistering heat and blinding light that beat on my straining eyes. Did my old friends ever really exist? Did any of it? And all of the hundreds and thousands of children that passed through this one-hundred and twenty year old playground -- were they ever real?
Recalling faces from long ago, I continued to ask, where were my old friends now, almost half-century later? Had they all moved very far away forgetting this small playground, or letting the memories intentionally slip away? I think people do that. If not, did they ever think of it? Do they ever think of me?
Did they have lives? Perhaps even families, children, and grand-children! An amazing thought. Did they live in houses and enjoy holidays together? Did they work hard, and feel justified walking into their homes? And how many were dead? And which ones? Was I really the only fool still here, still holding on to these thoughts of years ago? I wanted to know all this. But the silence, indifferent to my queries, spoke only of today, and only my useless memories brought the once teeming playground back to life.
What a contrast, those days, to the death-like silence of this particular day. No one, not a single person could be found anywhere. I may as well have been in the middle of a desert. Not one child ran, or tossed a ball. There was just the searing heat, the sun, and the silence. I began to sweat. It felt good. I had been indoors so long I had forgotten the feeling.
I dreamt of her last night. She sang to me.
Looking back to where I had been sitting I noticed that lovely woman had returned to her spot, proof, I believed that she left if fear of me, and returned only after I had gone. I made up my mind to go to the store and return to that bench diagonally across from her just to see what would happen. So I stood, went shopping, and returned and sat. She did not look up. She looked at her watch. Then, she smiled. Not at me. At the entrance to the playground stood some ape-like being, shaved head, fat, and speaking some foreign, Eastern European language. She went to him. They spoke, briefly. He kissed her gently, rather sweetly, on the mouth. They turned and walked away, arm in arm.
How wonderful it must be to have someone special like that in one's life. Someone who is glad to walk arm in arm with you. What must that feel like? It must be magical. More, how blessed. How special and fortunate for both. Did they know how lucky they were? Did they drop to their knees and thank God every morning, as I would, for their good fortune? Did either of them know what real loneliness meant? That God himself smiled upon them when he gave them to each other? Did they know any of this? Did they ask, "Why are we so lucky, and others so unfortunate?" Were they even aware of people like me? People who sit all alone, on holidays, on playground benches, listening to the silence of the blazing heat, with nowhere to go, and no one to see, no one to ask, "How are you?" or kiss sweetly, on the lips? Did they take pity on me? Did I exist? Or was I, as I have often felt, a phantom, and therefore, invisible? A ghoul that only a gifted few might sense or take note of? But not this couple. For them, I did not exist, not at all. If anything I might be a sad, ghostly figure, left over from some remote past, a different world even, something to be shunned, even feared.
I whisper, "Please, do not fear me. I am haunted, too." They do not hear me.
I walked back to the other spot in the sun, and noticed a baseball on the hot cement. I picked it up. It wasn't a real baseball but a hard, rubber one, made to look like a baseball. It even had real stitching. I threw it in my shopping bag. And continued on to the steps I used as a bench. After few moments I thought I would throw the ball against the wall and catch it. Sort of a work out, work up a sweat. So I did.
The first throw brought a twinge of pain in the shoulder. I'll work that out, I thought, as I throw. After about a dozen throws the pain was gone and I was really zinging the ball. I picked out a target and tried to hit it. First from one distance, then from a few feet further away. I was really sweating. A man my age walked by and said, "I wish I had that energy." I said, "I wish I did to--I'm about to collapse. But I just need to work up a sweat." He said he would, too, but was too out of shape and tired. At least I think he said these things. Maybe he wasn't there at all. I thought, for a moment, I might have been talking to myself. Odd that he should happen by just then and say that. Very odd. If he was there at all.
I continued on, while also trying to glean the looks on the faces of the occasional passer-by on the other side of the playground fence. "Look at this pathetic nut," I'm sure more than one of them thought. "This is his Fourth of July. What a loser." I couldn't blame them, really. I might have thought the same had I a life, or actual plans for the day with friends, and saw someone doing this, in the heat, alone in a child's playground. Yes, I might have thought the same too. Who wouldn't?
My workout complete, and sweating profusely, I returned to the bench. On the way I walked close enough to the little spraying fountain to get a little cool water on me. Then I sat, quietly, but noticed that the saxophone had ceased playing its melancholy tune. There was only a very deep silence now, a kind of silence that covers everything and makes the world seem unreal.
The heat was now oppressive, as was everything else: the date, the place, the circumstances and that eerie silence. I began to feel dizzy.
So I sat, waiting to feel steady again. But then I became overwhelmed by a sense of complete hopelessness, a sudden awareness that I was alone, completely and utterly alone. I tried, slowly, to stand. It was no good, as my dizziness now was too much. I wished that I could just lie on the bench, close my eyes and disappear, as phantoms sometimes do.
In time, I steadied and stood again. The silence was terrifying as I no longer had the music as a barrier between my mind and the dreadful emptiness that surrounded me, that was within me; I had no buffer between my confused and conflicted thoughts and this poor, pitiful, morbid reality. Silence will do that.
Barely conscious and exhausted, I stood and walked slowly home. Perhaps now I might be able to get a bit of sleep.
Soon, I thought.
Soon. . .
My workout complete, and sweating profusely, I returned to the bench. On the way I walked close enough to the little spraying fountain to get a little cool water on me. Then I sat, quietly, but noticed that the saxophone had ceased playing its melancholy tune. There was only a very deep silence now, a kind of silence that covers everything and makes the world seem unreal.
The heat was now oppressive, as was everything else: the date, the place, the circumstances and that eerie silence. I began to feel dizzy.
So I sat, waiting to feel steady again. But then I became overwhelmed by a sense of complete hopelessness, a sudden awareness that I was alone, completely and utterly alone. I tried, slowly, to stand. It was no good, as my dizziness now was too much. I wished that I could just lie on the bench, close my eyes and disappear, as phantoms sometimes do.
In time, I steadied and stood again. The silence was terrifying as I no longer had the music as a barrier between my mind and the dreadful emptiness that surrounded me, that was within me; I had no buffer between my confused and conflicted thoughts and this poor, pitiful, morbid reality. Silence will do that.
Barely conscious and exhausted, I stood and walked slowly home. Perhaps now I might be able to get a bit of sleep.
Soon, I thought.
Soon. . .
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