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A Symphony

A Symphony

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If walking in the suburbs is a sonata, walking in the city is a symphony. It is the cued entrance of  countless well-tuned players, the trilling of a piccolo, the thrum of a timpani. It is pedestrians striding through the square and construction workers in hard hats taking a break. 

It’s a stroll on the High Line and a view of lower Manhattan from Little Island, the city’s newest park. 

It’s meandering through the West Village, down Bedford and Barrow, past the Cherry Lane Theater and on to Bleecker, where I’ll grab a Napoleon and watch ten white-habited monks who’ve come from Our Lady of Pompeii to buy some cannolis. 

It’s the plume of a fountain in Washington Square Park and the chess players and weed hawkers and pickup jazz bands that gather nearby.

It’s a trip to the Strand Bookstore (still there!) on the way uptown, then dinner at a hundred-plus-year-old bar and grill.

Four movements, none of them replicable. A city walk. A symphony. 

Exhaling…

Exhaling…

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During the depths of the shutdown, as I wondered if life would ever be back to normal, I thought often of New York City. I had seen photos of empty streets, unpeopled sidewalks. I wondered if the city would ever be bustling again. I could take emptiness elsewhere — but not here.

Yesterday, as we drove through the Lincoln Tunnel, I held my breath. Would the city be … the city? Or would it look like parts of Portland and Seattle — other metropolises I’ve visited recently that were still shadows of their former selves?

The answer, at least so far, is no. Pedestrians strode down 34th Street, idled at corners staring at their phones, scampered under the omnipresent scaffolding. Delivery women pulled huge handcarts piled high with boxes, the NYC version of the Amazon Prime van that careens down our street at all hours. 

And on the Lower East Side, our destination for the evening, the pierced and tattooed ones sallied forth into the night wearing every crazy outfit you could imagine. 

I could finally exhale. 

The City Itself

The City Itself

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Today my brother, sister and I head north to the city, not Baltimore or Philadelphia, which are north of here too, but the city, which to me will always be New York City, where three of the four of us once lived.

The occasion is a birthday celebration, but do you need a reason to visit New York? 

Or, is the reason … simply the city itself? 

Outside-After-Dinner

Outside-After-Dinner

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The sound of children laughing two doors down, birds rustling and roosting in the azaleas, the clatter of plates being cleared. It’s 7:30 p.m. and as bright as day. It’s outside-after-dinner. 

To a child, this is a place of its own, magical and wild, long shadows looming where there were none at noon. It’s a place where rules are bent, bedtimes extended. 

When I was a kid I’d be excused early with cookies to go, then run to meet playmates from next door and across the street. We played SPUD and Red Rover till the streetlights came on.

For my own kids, there were long evenings catching fireflies or climbing hay bales to ride the zip line from the big oak on the Riley’s side of the yard (which is still standing) to the big oak on the Voegler’s side (which is not).

Now we sit on the deck slapping at mosquitoes, putting off going inside. There are grownup tasks awaiting us — bills to pay, emails to send.  But it’s hard to abandon the soft light and the feeling we’re getting away with something. It’s hard to leave outside-after-dinner. 

Bikers and Bierstadt

Bikers and Bierstadt

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A late walk yesterday after the rain stopped. Trees still dripping, air cleansed, sun blazing bright just hours before setting.

I wasn’t the only one out and about. Neighbors were picking up their mail, stretching their legs, walking their dogs.

A bevy of bikers zoomed past, the usual Tuesday evening crowd. Except that nothing is usual anymore. I didn’t see them for a year, so spotting them again, watching them fly past (I could barely wrestle my phone from my back pocket in time to catch them) was the cherry on the sundae that was yesterday’s stroll.

As I walked back to the house, the trees were lit up like a Bierstadt painting. 

Bye Bye, Brood X!

Bye Bye, Brood X!

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There’s no way of knowing who he or she will be, no way of pinpointing the last cicada in Virginia. Will it be a female dragging herself to a Kwanzan cherry tree to lay her eggs, perform her final duty. She walks so slowly up the trunk, settles herself with infinite tenderness. 

Or will it be a male, singing forlornly to the ether, no ladies left with whom to mate but warbling his most beguiling tune anyway. Beguiling to other cicadas, that is, shrill and sad to us.

The rest of their brood has been swept off of decks and stairways. Cicada carcasses have piled up at the base of crepe myrtles or road berms, marking where the insects met with predators — birds, dogs, automobiles. The tiny corpses litter the yards and driveways. 

Except for a few stowaways, Brood X is becoming a memory, a moment, a thing of the past.

And yet … even now the young are burrowing into the dark soil, tunneling down to their long sleep. In their species memory is a golden era, filled with flitting and humming and loving. They know, if they bide their time, it will come again. 

Once More to Metro

Once More to Metro

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Yesterday I went to D.C. via Metro, a trip I used to make most mornings but which I had not made since March 12, 2020.  That’s 15 months … a fact that even now I can’t quite absorb.

The parking garage was almost deserted at 2:30 p.m., likewise the platform and the train itself. I did quickly realize, however, that one of the other two souls on my car seemed to be psychotic, so at the first stop I moved to the next car.  That’s my Metro! 

Otherwise, though, the old system was gussied up and spit-polished, with new announcement boards and shelters and someone cleaning the elevator in the middle of the afternoon. 

I rode three lines, the Orange, Red and Silver. I read the newspaper, as I used to do, and noticed the changing scenery out the window. 

It was almost like old times … except there were almost no people riding with me. 

Thoughts on Emergence

Thoughts on Emergence

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In a single afternoon last week, I masked up and was led to a hand-washing station before a doctor’s appointment. Later, at a small boutique, I had my temperature checked and was told to use hand sanitizer before venturing in. 

At my last stop of the day,  a small shop that sells Catholic books and gifts, I was one of the few folks wearing a mask. “How do people expect us to breathe in one,” grumbled the proprietress, sans mask, as she wrapped up my purchase.  

Such is life as we emerge from pandemic restrictions here in northern Virginia.

In my travels to the Northwest almost a month ago, we wore masks most everywhere, including on the sidewalk in some neighborhoods, attempting to fit in with the locals. Yesterday, at a brunch in Arlington, the restaurant was fully occupied with scarcely a mask in sight. 

It’s a weird hodgepodge and infinitely preferable to what we had this time last year. So I’m not complaining, only observing that if there is one truth somewhere, one right way to do things, I’m not sure who knows it. 

(Disinfectant, anyone? At Pike Place Market in Seattle, May 15.)

Lake Anne, Part 2

Lake Anne, Part 2

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I’m so used to walking clockwise around Lake Anne that the other day when I strolled counter-clockwise with a friend I felt the world tilt a little. I also saw unexpected vistas. But this isn’t about that walk. It’s about three days later, when I went around the lake the right way (my right way, that is!).  Maybe I needed a stroll in the opposite direction to balance things out. 

Leaving the plaza behind, I passed quickly onto a wooded trail and then to a sunny embankment where morning light touched the tall grass.  

From there it felt good to slip into a shaded neighborhood, cool and inviting, lake water lapping at the shore. The townhouses here are some of Reston’s oldest (old being a relative term in Reston). I admire the variety of plantings, the lavender and roses, the whimsical touches.

Everywhere I looked was sparkling lake water, supporting a flotilla of kayaks or sending plumes of spray into the June sky.

I knew I’d come full circle when I reached an arched footbridge over a tributary. I wish I’d snapped a picture of that, too. But alas, it seems the only part of the walk I did not photograph. Next time …

Lake Anne: Part 1

Lake Anne: Part 1

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While I am in no mood for a staycation, I did feel like a tourist in my own town when I walked around Reston’s Lake Anne Saturday morning after buying strawberries at the farmer’s market.

I parked near a pedestrian tunnel and entered the plaza near the fountain. A brunch crowd was gathering at Local VA, an outdoor spinning class was in full swing, and merchants in booths were selling homemade ceramics, finger puppets, filmy scarves, imported rugs and hand-painted notecards. 

The big show was in the parking lot farmer’s market, where you could find tomatoes and greens and other seasonal delights. After I stowed the berries in the car, I walked around the lake, snapping photos as I strolled. More on the Lake Anne walk tomorrow …