Empty Bench

This morning I am taking a walk on the Upper West Side. The air is warm and heavy, and I stroll slowly through the quiet streets with no particular destination in mind; something I have so often done in the past in repeated attempts to gain the clarity or understanding that always seems so ephemeral. I find myself outside the Museum of Natural History, watching the people and dogs in the little park outside.

I see a young girl of about fifteen or sixteen sitting on a bench with her mother under the trees, whose branches are outstretched like bony arms reaching toward something elusive just beyond reach. The two are eating lunch - sandwiches, probably from the small deli with the fading red awning across the street. The girl looks restless, slightly embarassed even. Her eyes are downcast, as if trying to avoid eye contact. Maybe it's her silent declaration of autonomy. Maybe she's painfully self-conscious, in the sheepish and slightly perplexed way teenagers often are. She's bored - or feigning boredom, perhaps. Maybe it's because the girl feels a need to convey to her mother that she doesn't need the security and protection of a parent anymore, lest her mother mistakenly think that the girl is still the same child who had clung to her and cried when the sleepaway camp bus was about to pull away. And maybe it's even necessary for the girl to try to maintain this type of distance in order to form her own sense of identity or self.

But I want to call out to the girl. I want to warn her. I want to plead with her, to tell her that one day she'll regret this elaborate act she's putting on - that these moments will be forever beyond her grasp, that her arms will reach out in desperation, in yearning, in futility, like the trees.

But it's an empty bench. And there I stand, silently watching ghosts.

He Thinks of the Deceased as the Seasons Change

It's mid-August, and already I can feel autumn in the New York City air. It's something almost imperceptible and difficult to describe. Maybe it's the texture of the breeze, maybe it's atoms and molecules that make up the smells emanating from the rough and broken concrete sidewalks. Maybe it's the sound of the rustling in the trees. I don't know if growing up in this city has given me a hyper-sensitivity to this change of seasons. All I know is that I can feel it in my nerves, in my muscles, in the movement of my bones. It's a sense of motion, it's a sense of stagnation. It's loss and it's infinite possibility. It arouses in me a yearning for the past and simultaneously propels me, ill-prepared as I am, into the future. The Earth is rotating on its axis and moving in its orbit. Always the same, and always different. Consistent and ephemeral. Those that are gone return to me with increased clarity. I feel their presence more strongly, yet I am more keenly aware of the vast distance between us.

I was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a friend recently. Walking through the vast, majestic halls, we stopped to take in the Asian art. I was struck by a Chinese Scroll, entitled the Classic of Filial Piety by Li Gonglin, written in 1085. Landscapes and writing, preserved over nine hundred years. And the translation:

"Mourning for the Loss of a Parent - He thinks of the deceased as the seasons change"
The two of you went off in a boat
Floating far away
Longingly I think of You
My heart within is Pained