The price of soup has gone down to 81 cents, people. So sayeth the Soup Man. The BF and I passed him on the way to $6 movies Sunday morning. This was notable not only because of the new recession rate he quoted, but also because the BF finally got to witness the Soup Man firsthand. See, the deal is this: the BF is what you may call A Nicer Person than I Am. And also more even-keeled and reasonable. And sometimes I wonder, as I’m relating a story to him about the Soup Man or the b*tch I work with or why women don’t want to become their mothers, if he thinks maybe I’m overreacting or exaggerating. Like, maybe the Soup Man exists but he’s not quite as large or in possession of a cell phone or demanding of soup as I described. So although the Soup Man was not adding apps to his iPhone (okay, THAT may be an exaggeration) this time, the fact that he materialized before us and quoted an EVEN LOWER price for soup was a victory in my column. An “I told you so” moment, which I tend to cherish a little too much.
So that was the weekend. This is the week. And it’s another good one due to the NYU summer break. Which meant I got to sleep in this morning. It’s been awhile since that happened, and I noticed something that confirmed my transformation into a Real New Yorker. Backstory: I live two doors down from a firehouse. So at any moment of the day–or night–my relative peace (this is New York, after all) is disrupted by a whiny wail from a passing fire engine. My family especially gets a kick out of this, and by “gets a kick out of” I mean anything from laughter to the question, “When are you getting out of that place?” This morning, once the light started pouring through my uncurtained windows, my sleep-in became punctuated with moments of wakefulness. And at one point I heard the sirens pass my window and carry on into my dream as I dozed off. The significance is this: I am now so accustomed to city noise that instead of it serving as an alarm clock, it’s more like a sleep machine. Which made me wonder if I’ll ever be able to sleep well again once I leave New York. My worries were put to rest an hour later when I was woken by what sounded like a Mexican street fair outside my window: incessant Latin music blaring from a car that seemed TO BE GOING NOWHERE; yelling back and forth in Spanish; a chihuahua barking. Ahhh…time to get up.
Noise and concrete are two things we New Yorkers (I can now use the collective we; see above) get plenty of. Peaceful quiet and grass beneath our feet are not. So I decided this would be a day when I sought out both. First, a run along the East River right around noon on a sunny day when the light sparkles off the wavelets and the water actually looks clean and swimmable. Second, this:
That, my friends, is the view from my quilt of the sky above Madison Square Park. Look closely and you just may see God smiling–it was that beautiful of a day. Seventy degrees and not a cloud in the sky. Perfect, especially considering the endless rain that ushered summer in and the soupy heat that (apparently?) ended it. Throw in the soft squish of grass beneath her feet and you’ve got a happy girl.
(It reminds me of the theme song of Firefly, a show the BF has gotten me into: “You can’t take the sky from me…” No you can’t, New York!)
One oasis led to another, and before I knew it I was finishing Julie and Julia at one of my other favorite spots in the city:
Some refer to it, crudely, as a fire escape, but what you are seeing here is my veranda (to be spoken with a British accent). AKA prayer nook, AKA reading room, AKA sun deck. Yes, I know that with the bars it looks vaguely like a prison, especially when the sirens go by…but it’s my space. Mine. Temporarily and for a small fortune each month, of course. And we New Yorkers need our space from time to time. A place to get away from the noise and remember what quiet and solitude feel like. As I type that, a dump truck is barrelling down my street. So sometimes you get the quiet outside, and sometimes you have to find it in yourself. Off to the prayer nook.