New York: it's a helluva town

Walking through the town, call it a city if you want, but the east village is more of a town, a shaggy town, with shaggy people, not on the glitz of 2nd Av at St. Mark's Church, but going up B before the bar crowd hits -- but I digress.

So many people, so many opportunities at every moment, and so many narratives, good or bad to be launched into, some as deadly as death itself - living nightmares of your worst fear inflicted meaninglessly by someone you don't know, never met, could care less about, or maybe someone you really do inflicting worsee (though of course that nightmare is universal) and all the good, the fun, the sex, the food, the smiles, the joys of kids - all visible on the street in 4 blocks. Still I digress.

The sun came out at 3. The clouds slid to the east. For the first time in weeks you could relax outside. Spring has been dreadful in New York. I blame a colder ocean, but I don’t hear anyone talk about it. I will ask Al Roker if I see him. My response to the chilling wet has been to leave. Brief forays to LA, Cancun, DC for work, all enlivening helped.
Work takes the mind off the weather. But at all other times, I have simply retreated to my apartment, a nice little sunbox if there ever was one in this town. I digress, but the mood of seeing the sun, after a few jokes about maybe not till May, flavors the day.

Jason writes too much, I don’t write enough, I thought as I walked around.
Is it the act of writing that drives observations?
Or, should I credit my recent chiropractic adjustment? I swear to God I could barely feel my nervous system before?
Medical marijuana? The new chiro says I have a deficiency of adrenaline. I know have a lot less now. Can marijuana give me more adrenalin? Or do I need adrenal pills? Anyway, maybe more adrenalin is dangerous.
Has playing the piano rewired my body, physically, in some way?
People say I have been acting different lately. I know I have, perhaps it’s the comedy routine on Sundays, or the semi-retirement from work, or just the spring of spring.

* * *

What colored my mind when I saw the children’s book section and this flashed: there was at one time a great resentment by certain parents that their kids were reading books. The books they were reading were teaching them to talk differently, and worse think differently. But most of all, it was a loss of parental control: now there was a new voice competing with you for your child’s mind. This war for the child’s mind goes on today, expanded a from every media and direction. This war gets some attention, but the influences seem to be inexorable now. The world, or some particular slice of it, radically influences your child.

Why, on some days, do I just see a book, and other days, I have an associative string of thought that I know, at the deepest level, is correct?

Outside now, the top of Union Square, NW corner, is a close quarter dance of skateboarders, their urban obstacle course, and a stream of pedestrians, both predictable and unpredictable. What a great course it is. Flat road like surface unused, an island big enough to jump up on and do a variety of moves, complete with center flag pole. The surge of pedestrians are regulated by a traffic light. The boarders, accomplished all, and desiring an urban course, do the curb, the island, tricks on the flats, with a long straight for speed. The most intricate dance involves the boarders who like navigate the crowd surges. A boarder will see their lane, start, and then, a helper will jump off the island, clearing a lane that the boarder can surf through. These are the best in the city at what they do.

A discussion with a skater involved the words “destination” “place” and a sense of a “working city”. What makes a destination? Because a destination establishes a place, just like the skateboarders had created in the spot where the farmer’s market is. A place is somewhere someone can go, for so many reasons: and any of these mundane reasons (any bodily need, really), the working city is a mechanism, a beast, a living breathing unit that satisfies needs.