Fifteenth Entry

Wednesday, April 1st, 2020

This place has been radically changed—quickly and without any physical devastation.

At about 12:30 AM, I rode more than 25 blocks south on Seventh Avenue. Only two vehicles passed me during the moderately paced trip, one car and one van. Normally, even at 4:00 AM, even during a blizzard, there would be more vehicles out than last night. I saw exactly nine people – three of whom live on the street.

The dominance of facts and science continues to drift farther and farther from the pedestal they seemed to occupy in my youth. Now, what is accepted as science or fact, at least in mainstream corporate media, is based on “informed projections.” People are changing their behavior based on these projections. But what about projections regarding climate change? Is that problem too slow-moving to hold our attention, or to cause us to take action? Perhaps it is that there has not been enough potential profit from the needed changes?

What does it take to change a place—a big city, a glade, a rural road? What does it take to change a behavior, a relationship, a culture?

Time is the primary driver of change, and it usually moves slowly. Unexpected events can change a place quickly—a storm, an eruption, a war, some version of the Earth moving. Most people alive today are familiar with such events either first hand or through relentless news coverage. None of us are familiar with pandemics.

Remove shade from a glade and it can no longer be a glade. Remove trees from a forest and it is no longer a forest. Remove people from a populated place and what does it become?

Without people, New York City remains New York City, for now. The energy is different—very different— not gone, just changed. The smells, the sounds, even the buildings in a place can change, but it remains the same place; it is on the same ground. “Place” has many qualities, but it is always tied to the Earth.

The lack of noise is the most striking change to me. Can New York City be New York City without noise? Most city noise is made, in one way or another, by people, but the noise is not the people. The noise holds its own power; it is a force in the mix of place. Its absence here, in this city, may be more powerful than the absence of cars or people.