Unseasonably warm days this April, and I’m sitting in Washington Square Park watching the crowded passing scene that consists mostly of students. Fewer homeless people seem to inhabit the park at the moment, but the hot weather is bound to bring them back again seeking what passes for community and, for some, an easy access to dealers and drugs. I watch a few homeless men who circle the park like ghosts, barely having the energy to beg, their torn jeans worn below their underpants and scraping the asphalt. Another man makes the rounds daily with large, bad figurative paintings for sale. Almost no one they ask seems to respond to these men’s barely articulated requests for money, as they slowly stumble along on their daily circuit. They may live bedraggled lives on the edge, but they seem to push on.
Otherwise, I observe a man selling beer and water from an ice chest; someone strumming a guitar; another middle-aged man sleeping on his piano (an interesting short story itself); and many young people, a few intensely tattooed, dressed in shorts and summer dresses basking in the sun. The daffodils have been out awhile, the magnolia trees have begun to bud, and soon the park will turn into a relatively green oasis.
I think, as I always do in my 80s, about the passage of time, and of how much of the world and people I spent days with are no longer part of my existence.
But this park, that’s neither idyllic nor serene, is when its disorder and noise level are under control, and there are many people using the park to talk, meditate, and read—a good place to be.
