Saturday, January 28, 2012

photos from a strange winter




We have had an unusually warm winter in NYC and mostly people are pretty happy about it despite the fact that it portends something really scary about the state of the globe. But last week, we actually had snow. Not much and not really very pretty, but snow just the same. On a walk across the park, I took a few pictures - two of them weird, one just nice. The weird ones are the one of the Alice in Wonderland sculpture near the boat basin. If you look close, there is a splash of orange on the left of the statue. . .that was a buddhist or maybe a moonie - wearing an orange schmatta and not much else. Her bare arms looked very cold, but she was somehow understanding of the cold, Alice and the city around her. Then, there was the bagpipe. I heard it before I saw it - a girl, her bagpipes and the heart-breaking sound of Amazing Grace in the deep midwinter.
The umbrella ladies - not so strange, just picturesque.
Tonight - a very mild evening - I came out of the subway at 72nd and Broadway and honestly, my first thought was "they put spotlights on a few of the buildings uptown" . But you know what? It was the sun, coming in from the west in a spectacular beam. Quite lovely. Almost poetic.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

wishful thinking





The question is, who is doing the wishful thinking? Is it the folks who put up the "thin ice" sign wishfully thinking that winter would actually arrive as usual and then thinking - wishfully - that people would pay attention and stay off the ice? Is it the hellebores and forsythia thinking, wishfully - or wistfully - that spring has already sprung when, in fact, it is only January. Or is it the guys in the trees thinking - as is their wont - that it is during the winter when trees need pruning so when spring arrives - months from now - the branches will be healed and ready to sprout at the proper time and not, as seems possible, right now. So is it wishful to think that our globe is not in big trouble? I think so. I wish I didn't.