On Friday night, we stayed up past our bedtimes tinkering on our computers. Stuart wrote and played Civilization and I ordered various birthday and anniversary surprises for him. On Saturday, we woke up late and hit our favourite diner for lunch, and then dragged ourselves to the park to lay in the shade and read. I watched kids run around and no less than two wedding parties take photographs under Hell Gate bridge, while Stuart listened to a Kanye West CD he’d bought at a stoop sale on the way to the park.
Wandering home past Ditmars with the intent to grab coffee at Starbucks, we walked past someplace that’s already won a place in our hearts, a little cafe called freeze peach, with couches and local babies hanging out and delicious iced tea and absurdly cheap wireless. It started raining while we were in there which made it all the easier to settle in for two more iced teas, and taking up station at two of the aging PC laptops, we did research for various writing projects and emailed each other snarky commentary about other patrons. We walked home and ordered Chinese food and I settled down with my notes and my laptop and banged out some writing, while Stuart squashed people with enormous helicopters in San Andreas.
On Sunday, we managed to wake up before noon and decided to make a day of it in the north end of Central Park. Grabbing bagels at 30th avenue, our day hit a glitch when the subway wouldn’t run directly to Queensboro Plaza, we had to ride back up to Astoria Blvd and then ride all the way down to QBP nonstop. Urgh! I had to eat my bagel standing up in the train but I tried not to complain as much as I usually do when I’m hungry and shaky. We got to the park and wandered through the Conservatory Garden for a few minutes.
Reading Devil In the White City is giving me an even greater appreciation for Olmstead and what he did with Central Park. Even though I like the Garden, it’s when you leave its gates and walk into that unique gentle wilderness that Olmstead made, you see the wooded island in the Meer and the way even the rocky hill is thoughtfully placed, you wish you could shake his hand.
We borrowed two bamboo poles from the Dana Center and found a shady spot to fish. Stuart ran across the street for spam and we dried it in the sun to use at bait. You’d be hard-pressed to call what I did fishing – it was more like gently feeding lunchmeats to the crafty nibblers at the bottom. Stuart fooled them, though – he caught two. Releasing them was scary since you have to gently unhook their mouths and then slip them back into the water. When we go camping, it’s been decided, we’re getting a second rod and second temporary permit for me. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get brave enough to touch one, if I catch it.
On the walk up to 125th street, we walked through Mount Morris neighborhood and it was so charmingly Harlem..ian? Ladies in resplendent African-patterned dresses outside an old church, Neighborhood cafes packed full of intelligentsia and young teenagers shouting jokes to each other. It was a neighborhood that, had it been mine, I would have been proud to call home.
On the bus ride back to Astoria, we started chatting to these two non-natives, who’d been visiting for the week. One, a teacher from Miami applying for the Fellows program, and the other, a teacher from North Carolina visiting his girlfriend. It’s amazing how quickly Stuart and I get to talking to strangers – is it something about us, when we’re together, that makes us approachable? Even a woman in the Garden, watching a jewish wedding from the bench next to ours (we were watching too, what, public weddings!) talked to us about our marriage, how we met, what she thought of the bride.
The one stranger we didn’t talk to was the young man hammering at a bike chain, three lampposts down from our own front door. We stood in the foyer, having a hushed discussion on whether he was stealing the bike. It was a Kryptonite chain he was hammering at, surely the sheer brashness of the attempt would bely it being theft? We couldn’t decide and, in a move I’m still not entirely comfortable with, decided to just assume it was his and not interfere. It still sits funny with me because for all the effort I make to interact with my neighbors both in Astoria and the whole city, what am I doing if I’m too chicken to say something about the guy and his bike, or to the obnoxious man chasing after and terrifying the Canada Geese in the park, or the man standing next to our fishing spot fly-fishing when it was strictly prohibited to do so in Harlem Meer?
Am I taking the best the city offers, and not trying to help ease the worst her citizens can do? Maybe it really was his bike, then wouldn’t he have felt assured that one of his neighbors took the pains to make sure she asked him? What if the irritated goose attacks some little kid holding her hand out? Fly-fishing can be traumatizing to the fish in the Meer, why wouldn’t I point out that he wasn’t supposed to?
Perhaps next time my surroundings and activities are so brilliant, I’ll make the extra effort to keep the city so beautiful. Besides, it’s just a bike, or a fish, I’d do something about a truly unfair or traumatic moment, right? Don’t know what I’m basing that on.
I’ll trail off callously and say it was a beautiful weekend and just what I needed.

Advertisement