SUNDAY IN THE PARK

It's Sunday, and the weather is glorious.
I seize the day like a hungry ghost. 

(Or, like a ghost with a day pass?)

I'll bike to Central Park!
(This could be one of my last bike rides in the month of September - I think - or - try NOT to think about). 

I bike to to the Park.

I bike north through Riverside.

The city is swarming with outdoor, sporty types!
Under the west-side highway, below Trump City, there is a (new) volleyball court planted in the center of a sunny expanse of green fields. (It seems) if there is a vacant spot to plant a bush, create a little park, or build a volleyball court... it will be found and transformed. I dreamed of this for the City (in the eighties) but didn't think it possible.

As I bike, I scowl. I am an outsider (now). A year ago, I'd be jogging down the bike path, shirtless. I'd be cycling to a tennis game on my Schwin with a racket strapped on my back.

Now I'm a faker. I pretend-peddle, the battery does all the heavy lifting. I keep my soiled t-shirt on to hide my (lazy upper body).


Instead of a tennis racket, I carry a book of essays by Mary Baker Eddy.

Still, I pull on the throttle.

ZIP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I can go fast!)

Central Park!

I know this.
I know where I am.
I like this. This is me.
Ah... yes!

I loop the park. The park is a kamikaze course of shirtless men, athletic women, parents and their children, and an army of peddle carts.

I ride by the rock outcropping near 110th on the west side. As you pass the rock, it feels like you're instantly dropping into a National Park. I always (make sure) to bike underneath it, certain of its curative power.

I bike 'round Sheep's Meadow, a place to be included, to be seen.

(I remember napping in Sheep's Meadow two or three days after 9/11. A fire truck drove by, its siren blaring. The entire crowd stood up and cheered as it drove by. (the slow clap)

I end my ride at Cherry Hill Fountain. There is a circle of benches. I sit on a bench, take my shirt off, and point my flaccid torso toward the sun. 

I open the paper.
I read (in the New York Times) how prayer is big business (right now), the teaching of prayer and spirituality. The writer (or reporter) is funny and aloof (and annoying). Even when he was near death himself (he writes) he still wondered if he left his front door unlocked. He simply can't pray, doesn't believe. This is gimmicky writing. (He couldn't have been THAT near death).

I move to the grass and collapse to the ground in one, broken motion. My legs have no power to negotiate. I am up... and then I am down.

I pull out the Book Review and read about Paul Rudnick's new "hysterical" book (so MANY funny gay men writing memoirs). I read about the personal essays and stories of Jonathan Ames. I read a book about the history of jigsaw puzzles, the writer wove the history of puzzles into her own memoirs.

Oh! and I saved Thursday's HOME Section. (I love what the HOME Section comes up with). A woman in Texas, a lawyer, collects depression era HOUSES. She buys them cheap and drags them to her big, old, Texas Ranch. She has 25. I love that. I'd love to have 25 old houses in my backyard.

I lie on the grass. I am healing in the open air. The leafy trees, the dirt, the thriving undergrowth create a rambling paradise that cures. It's all apart of me and I'm in it.


"Gosh, it's so beautiful."

It's 5 pm. I exit through 72nd Street, past my friend Slade's apartment building.

Last time I saw him, we played tennis in the park.