I know that it is now spring in New York because I ran into five separate people I know on the street in one afternoon, four within five minutes of each other and the final one was the sister of the first. I know that it is now spring because I went to maybe my favorite place to eat in all of New York City, a chaotic roast pork counter in Chinatown where they don't use a cash register but rather the same greasy cardboard boxes day in and day out, one for bills and one for change, and I took my hot styrofoam and ate it on a park bench while the sun was still up (when I saw the fifth friend in the street she and her coworker were crossing the park where I was sitting, I approached them mid bite gesturing with my open container of pork like, what, what is this, how has this come to be?). I know that it is now spring in New York City because I walked home from work today, on a whim - you can't plan to, where's the fun - all five and a half miles, with very few cares in the world (except at the front of my mind, where to piss, two separate Starbucks). I was rained on for about 2 miles of it but I kept under the elevated train tracks and charged ahead anyway. Conveyance is very important to me, it's always been a valuable exercise for me to get my body from one place to another - I'm pleased and grounded when I can use public transit effectively and I feel strong and capable when my two little legs take me up over the big ol river.
(Remembering now how the first summer in Alaska I was tractor beamed into the woods by someone's mention of a waterfall deep down a path, I went unprepared with little thought and no forethought at all, didn't tell anyone I was going, left my room and walked until I got there hours later, stuck my head in the freezing downpour of the waterfall, screamed at the absolute top of my lungs, I was bellowing. Someone told me it was five miles in and five miles out, just about the distance I go to work and back each day, if only my work for money could be sticking my head in a freezing waterfall once a day. There's footage of that moment - I set up my camcorder that afternoon - but I dare not watch it. The days were long then and in my mind they were golden, I don't want to see how it actually looked).
I know that it is spring in New York because I have taken the duvet itself out of the cover and I will spend the rest of the summer sleeping with just the flattened duvet cover as a comforter (yellow on one side, white on the other, floral, it occurs to me that a new duvet cover might really change things up in my life, is this how I really feel, is this what it's come to? I repotted a basil plant and threw out a dead fern tonight and felt so proud of myself but the inside part of my room’s door still doesn’t have a proper doorknob).
There’s a very beautiful song written and performed by Jonathan Richman, perhaps you are already thinking of it. It is called Springtime in New York. The lyrics specifically mention April. It’s a really good song.
It occurs to me that this song is written about another New York entirely, a New York of 20 years ago, however long, one that includes Kim’s video being open and St. Mark's being cool (I actually think it's still cool) and CBGB’s not being a fancy clothes store and affordable rent and whatever else, things I’ve fantasized about. I wonder when it’s written and now I see that the record that song is from came out like three weeks after September 11th. He must have written it long before the attacks, he had probably spent a beautiful spring day in New York or else he was thinking about it, fondly, at a remove. How different the song must have felt to him in the days that followed that specific day, having to sing it in those uncomfortably patriotic months, those scared and desperate flag waving times, when we took pride collectively in the fact that Al Qaeda had not fully cancelled professional wrestling telecasts. Jonathan with this already sad and bittersweet song - a song about about the lightness and warmth of New York, a place where you run into five people a day on the street, that highlights the eviction of a couple and their screaming on the sidewalk. Jonathan lived here for a time, he crashed on the Velvet Underground’s couch when he was 15 which just absolutely blew his life open (he often talks about this in concert in-between songs). I can’t imagine what he felt when the record came out in 2001, his love letter changing, I was on Canal street yesterday, all the smoke and fire and destruction, and to think I had never once considered the proximity of this album coming out and the events of that day. There was a meeting at some point in the record company's offices, do we put it out anyway? And they did, then the following year there was a promotional poster for that record up in my freshman year english class. I can't remember if I put it up myself with my teacher's approval or if he put it up himself, but I remember thinking that high school would be okay because me english teacher (who became a friend) liked Jonathan Richman.
I don’t know what the significance of this is exactly but as I am writing this looking for a point to make there is a group of cops outside arresting somebody in the middle of my street. Their red and blue lights are flashing on the walls of my bedroom and from what I can hear from their walkie talkies it is something drug related. I imagine that this person they’re surrounding was out for a stroll tonight in the cool air after an early evening rain, thinking they liked springtime in New York, too.