Thirty-fifth Entry
Tuesday, April 21st, 2020
Five hours of sleep—then I was awake for no reason I could name. No city noise woke me.
I basked in the quiet as I have for so many mornings over the last month.
Quiet, like anything in short supply, can be savored. After a while I realized I was savoring an absence. An absence of noise. Most savoring is of a presence: a fine wine, an exotic cheese, the sound of breaking waves, a star filled sky. When the pleasure is an absence—the elimination of something unwanted or negative—the savoring may have different qualities.
Noise, for me, is the single worst aspect of living in New York City. I’ve felt this way for more than twenty years. Noise can be a disruptor no matter where you live; that annoying sound might be a chainsaw, a garbage truck, a passing train, a barking dog, a car alarm, or a noisy neighbor. Thankfully, at some point, the noise stops; the wood is cut, the neighbor falls asleep, the dripping faucet is finally fixed.
In New York, we have all those sounds with endless variations, rarely as a solo and sometimes at operatic levels. There are also sirens (if not from ambulances, then from fire trucks or the police), jack hammers, motorcycles, and loud street arguments that you can hear from your kitchen. There are car alarms, car horns, cars blasting music, vans broadcasting religious or political speeches, endless construction, helicopters, back up alerts… it is truly relentless. Impressive in its own way.
Having the most negative feature of anything removed or washed away is not an experience we encounter often. What if the most annoying quality of your mate, boss or parent, vanished? It can happen. Such a change could easily render that person unrecognizable – a stranger. However welcome and delightful such a change might be, it would take some getting used to.
Significant change is unsettling.
The tide of eye contact is rising. On Worth Street, two guys called out to me for some kind of exchange. Their plea was in their eyes, bodies, and energy fields. Silent or not, any kind of connection with another person in this isolating time is precious. No sound or significant movement was involved in our connection; the need seemed satisfied with eye contact in one case and a nod in the other. Clear communication without story. Rare. Rich. Simple.
The white plastic chain around the 9/11 Memorial was tauter than last week. I imagined the lone guard was somewhere nearby, but with the resumption of light rain, no one was around. I ducked under the chain, hoping to get a better look at what was once so public.
No water was falling along the main granite walls of the north pool, though water spilled into the central void from the large dark rectangular pool thirty feet below the plaza. The water falling away, out of sight is a powerful symbol.
I noticed a white rose tucked into the bronze band of names surrounding the pool. Impressively plump and luscious—filled with life force—unlike the more common slender buds. I saw at least a half dozen of these white roses scattered around and assumed each one had been placed by a person at the names of people she or he had known.* Unlike in the current crisis, those deaths all occurred within a small fraction of one day.
* I later learned the roses are placed each morning by the memorial staff honoring the birthdays of those who perished.