Riverdale Diaries

May 20, 2013

But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason. In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed.

-Ernest Hemingway from A Moveable Feast

It was the first warm day of summer. The temperature rose to 80 degrees and the city was jubilant – swimming in colors and sweat. Madison Square Park was a garden for lost wanderers such as myself. I soaked up the heat, the first natural heat I have felt in months, as I read A Moveable Feast. Hemingway spoke to me about falls and winters, but I sat in the cusp of spring, welcoming the summer radiance, like a new-born flower – its petals barely visible as they emerge from the ground. Across from me sat a girl. Her body was stretched as if she was floating. On what, I don’t know. All of us were floating… it was that kind of inebriating warmth. Her eyes were fixed at the sky, as if she were guarding it– as if her eyes were a magnet for the sun. As if she had longed for that warmth for a long time now. Beside me sat a middle aged man; pages trembled slightly on his left hand. I looked over out of curiosity, for these are city people; these are the people that I've wanted to be for years. And now, for the first time, I’m one of them. Yet, at the same time, I’m a lonely traveler – a lost wanderer still, never quite belonging. Maybe the secret is simply just that: we’re all alone. We live our lives feeling like outsiders, when the reality is that being outsiders is what makes us all belong. I caught a glimpse of the page and recognized what it was immediately. Its lean structure gave it away. I devote my life to that glorious silhouette, so there was no way I wouldn't try to read it now. I wondered if they were his. Was he a professor? Was it an assignment? Was it his assignment? I felt like a spy, so intrusive that I looked away every five seconds to make sure no one was noticing me prying on this man’s personal document. But I did, and as I was stealing this stranger’s words, I had that inexplicable feeling that comes to me when I take pictures… a feeling of stealing someone’s life, capturing their soul, being let into a secret that was never meant to be yours in the first place. And I find that, like poetry itself, the words are as human, as deeply resonant to us all, as is the need for water. And maybe that is a second truth: Art is our attempt to decode life by divulging secrets that have never been secrets to begin with. 

Watching you
Crossing the street
In my direction
I am in awe
Of your arrival