I take pictures when I run. I am athlete and artist; sometimes both, often neither. I dilly-dally, interrupting my miles to photograph a bee, or the way that the leaves rust and crumble in autumn storms. I pause the watch that polices pace and distance, take out my phone, point, and shoot. I collect images, yes, but also places and times, and the way the humidity lingered in the air that morning, boiling off the pond. The singular glee of dew on a tulip. An egret in wait. I witness.
The first of the spring pictures is dated March 26, which is fully spring on the calendar but usually “why is it still fucking freezing?” spring in New York. In the photograph, I’ve captured a cluster of shy magnolias, not yet ready to greet the world, the plum to white ombre of their petals expectant against a pale sky. All of the flowers, of course, are oblivious to the end of times.
There is a fundamental disconnect with this sort of existence.
March 28. Saturday, if that is a meaningful term at this point. I am somehow out the door and two miles from home at a quarter to seven. The El Dorado apartment building looms over the park reservoir, keeping its watch of the west side. This was the land of Zabar’s, the planetarium, and You’ve Got Mail. Today, it’s Cloverfield.
The sky, which up until this moment has only shown the slightest promise of sunrise, now explodes in rose. Can rose be a shade of purple? That is what this color is, rosepurple, and it splatters itself on the El Dorado and the countless buildings where important people sleep. Those of us on the running path freeze in unison. We are all taking pictures, but now we are looking at each other, as well. Are you seeing this? We are two weeks into a nightmare, and we are incredulous to find out that we are awake.
April 4, 7pm. When we complain about the time change in the fall, it is because of nights like this here. The sky, peppered with Bob Ross clouds, is at its most outgoing cyan. The wind could probably be called brisk – but change is sweeping its way across the currents, and you don’t need a jacket for a short walk. Come play, the night beckons.
Today, I did not run. I am running every other day now, having arbitrarily decided that being a good citizen means sometimes working out in my living room, subjecting our downstairs neighbors to the thump-thump of Barry’s Bootcamp acrobatics. I would buy an extra yoga mat to pad the noise, but everything is a million dollars. The sun still rose today.
Tonight, my view is bisected by our window frame. A column of light from the west falls on a building across the street. What the photograph I take does not memorialize is the sound – no video can correctly tell you what this was like; at the same moment every evening, the city, which has been muffled with fear for every other minute of the day, erupts with joy.
April 16, 6:40am. I am perched on Fort Clinton, a battlement used in two wars, chosen because it overlooks the enemy. If you look in one direction, you see the marshmallow-white hospital tents where six people have died now. And if you turn your gaze to where I point, the Japanese cherry trees are in full bloom. The palest peach, the angriest magenta, a shock of white. The trees sit on a bed of grass that is miraculously manicured. Who mows the park at a time like this?
April 24, just before noon. Rain comes down hard on the lake. The egret is no longer in wait. She is restoring herself.
May 7, haze before dawn. Someone has tied a sign to the reservoir fence. The message is scrawled in marker on green construction paper, with a red heart jutting out from its upper frame. It reads, “Happy days will come again. Take heart. Hold fast.” In the distance, you can see skyscrapers, less full than they were.
May 16, before noon again. A Parks Department officer sits on a magnificent dappled horse. The cop wears a mask and stares back at me. We do not smile.
May 18, dawn. A northern cardinal hunts from a branch. The bright red plume, I cannot look long enough. The leaves are fully grown now, reaching every which way to get my attention. We all exist together.
Memorial Day, 2020. Four days from now, Governor Cuomo will announce that New York City is to Enter Phase 1 of Reopening. I am jogging on the bridle path, mid-morning. The Gothic Bridge appears in the distance. I often stop here for the weather-proof fountain; the frigid water feels like another beginning.
Here, too, there is a sign hung against the bridge’s rail. This one is spray-painted onto a rectangle of white cloth. The black print is emphasized by lime green shadow. Even after all of these photos (I have not slept in ten weeks and every one is both blur and pointillism), I am stunned by what’s in front of us.
“We Are Still Alive.”
