Post 22 - April 2, 2020
Day 22…
New York is in full glorious bloom.
I’m sure that this is something that happens every year at this time, but until now, I am sad to say that I don’t think that I have never fully noticed it and taken it in.
There are flowering trees EVERYWHERE. Huge, beautiful trees screaming color up and down New York City’s streets and avenues.
Every street meridian and every flower box have in them a riot of color from crowds of spring bulbs.
These days, there is a level of quiet in New York that is mind-boggling.
There is only a tiny percentage of the usual traffic.
Busses are still running and there is the occasional taxi and car, but then there are vast stretches of time when even the largest avenues are completely empty.
All non-essential construction has been put on hold. That steady thumping of digging, building and demolition equipment that is almost seems like the heartbeat of the city has stopped.
Crowded sidewalks have drastically thinned out.
People aren’t screaming at each other trying to rise above the usual rave-level decibels of the city.
There is still the occasional ranting lunatic but there is nobody out there listening. Their endless diatribes fall on absent ears.
Periodically the silence is broken by a siren from a fire truck or an ambulance.
The level of volume from them is so completely unnecessary out on these empty streets.
In some ways, hearing how loud they really are and realizing how easy they usually are to ignore makes you understand just how LOUD the city always is.
Well, now it’s quiet.
There’s none of that noise these days, so when you walk down the empty city streets there is nothing distracting you from seeing all of our trees shrieking their color from every corner.
It’s overwhelming.
As New Yorkers, we have an innate sense of spatial relationships in regard to each other. Without thinking, we can walk down the street and never bump into anybody no matter how crowded. We can tell from 30 feet away, based on how fast somebody is walking across the street whether we are going to collide and adjust long before we get there.
We often cross within inches of each other but both of us know exactly where we are and know that we aren’t going to collide.
This alarms tourists who come from far less crowded places and are not at all comfortable with the seemingly constant near collisions that we all just take for granted.
The advent of cell phones has screwed a lot of this up.
People lose all sense of where they are in relation to others when they are glued to their phones.
They behave like drunk drivers on a jammed freeway.
Now, though, out on the streets, we are staying FAR away from each other.
6 feet is the minimum mandated by government guidelines but lots of people are staying much farther away from each other than that.
Walking down the street yesterday, for the first time, I was aware of people instinctively veering out of each other’s way.
From 20 feet away.
As I was walking, I could see people actively recoil from each other in a way that they never would have done three weeks ago.
We’re learning.
It’s getting into our sub-conscious.
In a few more weeks we are going to forget that it was ever any other way.
The people I saw out on my walk who were NOT practicing physical distancing were exclusively young - teenagers and 20 somethings.
I am still seeing groups of kids hanging out together.
They are spreading this virus among them and then taking it back to their homes.
I don’t know how we stop them.
I remember being that age - as long ago as that was - you are invincible.
Nobody can tell you a blessed thing because you know better.
Yesterday, our Mayor, DeBlasio closed all of the city playgrounds to try and stop some of this behavior. I’m not seeing these kids hanging out in playgrounds, I’m seeing them just walk down the street together. Closing the playgrounds may help with younger kids so I guess that’s a good thing.
The English have an expression, supposedly based on a Chinese curse (although there doesn’t seem to be any such curse) that says, “May you live in interesting times.”
We are living in interesting times.
Pay attention to what is happening.
We have never experienced anything like this.
Take it in.
Like anything new, some of it is anxiety-provoking, but it is also amazing.
The whole world is going through the same thing.
The WHOLE WORLD.
Don’t let fear stop you from following along and experiencing the “Wow”.
We are, indeed, living in interesting times.