Word Rut

Since I’m in a word rut, I’ll go into my computer’s basement to see what’s there…

 

OK, here’s a golden oldie from way back when in the summer of

2003:

 

Blackout

 

 

Part 1:

 

We will take such events as an excuse to get physically close to our brethren, other New Yorkers; to mingle and migrate with them, us, I, by the million. To be centered on our two great common denominating thoughts: one of being a New Yorker in a New York moment of transience, and one of being a spark in a city of 4 million plugs. We focus forward and accelerate; we actively celebrate those with whom we are joining, rather than passively blink at who might be joining us.

 

We traverse great bridges on foot. We split apples with strangers. We proffer ponderance on the journey from Washington Heights to Red Bank using human contacts and a thumb. (Get to Hoboken, ask for Dave, he’ll take you to Slabby’s, $40 for a cab to New Brunswick, catch a bus there.) We casually glean the intricate meaning of the details in strangers’ lives.

 

We drink beer and wine and are ever more careful when playing darts in a dark bar. We smile at the policeman, who smiles back while suggesting that we keep to the left of his imaginary traffic boundary.  We keep left, and conspire to swing right somewhere in the unfurling distance.

 

We walk from upper east to upper west.

 

We sweat in metro-humidity. We curb crawl the neighborhoods for fresh bodega boxers and cold water.

 

Darkness brings an adrenalin rush. The stranded search for sleep on 42nd and Broadway, in Battery Park, in Central Park.

 

We sleep on marble steps, park benches and green lawns.

 

For the first time on this tiny island we have no light but the stars. The constellations confuse us, so we invent our own.

 

Inventing Constellations

 

Part 2:

 

Never did get to “Part 2.” Probably would have been something about personal transformation after drunken “blackout”, followed by a transition into a mundane conclusion about changing a light bulb. No. Storm wind blowing out candles. Light, rebirth and all that jazz. Yuk. Thank God “Part 2” didn’t happen.