Infatuation
The sunlight catches the city by surprise. It came so gradually, this slide towards summer. The city feels like someone who was dejected in life and suddenly found himself in the embrace of a new infatuation. Winter was easy, but it doesn't change the flush of pleasure that comes with the first unpleasantly warm day when the gals walk about in flimsy clothes and men dress with more attention paid to comfort than to style. Gone are the layers of gore-tex and wool; sweat beads collect upon our brows and the trash starts to smell just a tiny bit pungent.
I was sitting in the park when the sky began to turn. Twenty Puerto Rican guys were playing futbol and I was reading Knut Hamsun, writing me a letter from the Norwegian wildneress, condemning the lifestyle of the city-dweller and his disconnect from nature. The street noise surrounded the park and would be interrupted by the occasional songbird. The sky was blue and open, the sun gave off a rejuvenating burn. But from the distance the dark clouds marched in like a passing battalion. Great thunderheads that boomed and flickered. The rain came first in occasional fat droplets and quickly increased its tempo, turning the field immediately to mud. The children scurried off the swings and beneath their parents umbrellas. The Puerto Rican dudes continued their game, just like the professionals, and I put my book in the dry safety of my bag.
The rain passed in a quarter hour and I was soaked to the skin. The sun was back out and I walked across Brooklyn, letting its warm embrace dry my soggy clothes. Small steam came off the bricks of apartment houses as the water returned to the sky. The flimsy dresses were back out from under cover of awnings and tap rooms. This city has left behind the slow solitude of winter. It is a great moment, like the start of a relationship, where the lonely cold is gone, but the oppressive heat of routine has not yet set in.
I was sitting in the park when the sky began to turn. Twenty Puerto Rican guys were playing futbol and I was reading Knut Hamsun, writing me a letter from the Norwegian wildneress, condemning the lifestyle of the city-dweller and his disconnect from nature. The street noise surrounded the park and would be interrupted by the occasional songbird. The sky was blue and open, the sun gave off a rejuvenating burn. But from the distance the dark clouds marched in like a passing battalion. Great thunderheads that boomed and flickered. The rain came first in occasional fat droplets and quickly increased its tempo, turning the field immediately to mud. The children scurried off the swings and beneath their parents umbrellas. The Puerto Rican dudes continued their game, just like the professionals, and I put my book in the dry safety of my bag.
The rain passed in a quarter hour and I was soaked to the skin. The sun was back out and I walked across Brooklyn, letting its warm embrace dry my soggy clothes. Small steam came off the bricks of apartment houses as the water returned to the sky. The flimsy dresses were back out from under cover of awnings and tap rooms. This city has left behind the slow solitude of winter. It is a great moment, like the start of a relationship, where the lonely cold is gone, but the oppressive heat of routine has not yet set in.
posted by Charles Brownstein | 5:44 PM
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