Snapshot of a Commute, August 2006
If you're lucky, you're the kind of person who can put yourself outside of it, just for a second, and recognize it for what it is and be so, so thankful.
On my way home from work today, I couldn't hold back the smile I felt, the kind that starts at your face but grows to inhabit your whole body. New York City summers are always a little hot, a little sticky, a little smelling of garbage and cursing that damn ice cream truck song that plays on every corner.
In the two block walk from the train station to my house, the neighborhood kids had opened three separate fire hydrants, and the street was a cool arching tunnel of water and fine mist that gave off a metallic smell, a smell of concrete and water and summer like the nozzle on the end of a garden hose. Adults had carried folding tables out onto the street and played card games on the edge of the hydrant's mist, wearing bathing suit tops, drinking beer out of paper bags and wearing dirty white towels around their necks to wipe the sweat and beaded water from their hair and brow. Boom boxes were shoved into the windows of the walkups lining the block blaring 10 different songs all at once and the vibe on the street was as if nobody had a care in the world.
It was infectious.
There was still that sour summer garbage smell in the air, and my clothes were still heavy and sticking to me uncomfortably, but in that moment I didn't really mind. I'm 32, I live in Brooklyn, and I'm doing exactly what I set out to do and I'm living right exactly where I want to be.
What a good feeling. ¶ 7:57 PM
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
There are moments in life where the evolution of time bends itself to the bliss you're experiencing. There are moments where, immersed deep in the pleasure that happens somewhere between breathing and getting what you need, where seconds stretch to hours, stretch to years, and you realize with a start that you're smack in the middle of one of those situations you always said you'd have when you were very small and used to say *that's* how my life will be when I grow up. One of those situations that you think you might want to live forever inside of.If you're lucky, you're the kind of person who can put yourself outside of it, just for a second, and recognize it for what it is and be so, so thankful.
On my way home from work today, I couldn't hold back the smile I felt, the kind that starts at your face but grows to inhabit your whole body. New York City summers are always a little hot, a little sticky, a little smelling of garbage and cursing that damn ice cream truck song that plays on every corner.
In the two block walk from the train station to my house, the neighborhood kids had opened three separate fire hydrants, and the street was a cool arching tunnel of water and fine mist that gave off a metallic smell, a smell of concrete and water and summer like the nozzle on the end of a garden hose. Adults had carried folding tables out onto the street and played card games on the edge of the hydrant's mist, wearing bathing suit tops, drinking beer out of paper bags and wearing dirty white towels around their necks to wipe the sweat and beaded water from their hair and brow. Boom boxes were shoved into the windows of the walkups lining the block blaring 10 different songs all at once and the vibe on the street was as if nobody had a care in the world.
It was infectious.
There was still that sour summer garbage smell in the air, and my clothes were still heavy and sticking to me uncomfortably, but in that moment I didn't really mind. I'm 32, I live in Brooklyn, and I'm doing exactly what I set out to do and I'm living right exactly where I want to be.
What a good feeling. ¶ 7:57 PM
