the silence of the snow Jan 20, 2025
The snow came later than expected, yet ended sooner with less accumulation than many of the masters of our universe predicted.
Still, we got the deep chill, freezing the remnants so that where we failed to shovel turned into ice.
The storm did not stop me from the sunday night ritual of chinese food, a place called Yummy on 48 the Street a block up from Broadway – which we frequented even during the year of COVID.
That was early in the storm. But the panic had already set into the populas. On saturday, hundreds of people crowded the shopright, leaving long lines as they stocked up for the end of the world. Sundday, midday, the panic was worse as the first flakes struck, a bumper car ride might have reflected the kind of mania people displayed wheeling their catts down narrow ailses.
But by evening, when I took my keep-warm bag with me, the streets were mostly emply of cars and pedestrians, and I strolled over the gradually covered sidewalks to the shop, and then back, feeling much like I did as a kid early in a snow storm. It was as if I had the whole world to myself.
It was too cold to make my way down to the river where I might have wanted to gaze at the evening skyline, but I wanted to, even if meant going passed the place where our poet used to reside.
I saw the Bob Dylan movie on Friday, which made me nostaglic for old New York, and reminded me of when I lived there and worked as a messenger, and how I felt the same way when delivering packages in the snow covered streets of Manhattan.
The movie also made me ache again for those days when Hank and I went to the Village in search of a village that no longer existed, a village out of which Dylan emerged, a village with people like Pete Seeger, Simon & Garfunkel, Peter, Paul and Mary, and others. This ache made worse by the reported death of Peter a few weeks ago, since we had come to the village too late for any of that.
We did the coffee houses, singing all the songs that those people sang. I read poetry in the open mics. But it wasn't the same, and wish I could go back in time to be part of that cutlure. Even Woodstock where Dylan lived for many years had already lost its splendor when I finally got there (discounting my fly over the concert at bethal in an army helecopter in 1969). To have been part of those things is something special, having been where it was happening when it was happening. I always arrived a bit too late, if not on the East Coast, even out west, visiting Laurel Cayon. I did get to know one of the Merry Pranksters in LA, but he was already burned out by that time.
So, I going back to playing all those old songs from back then, reliving them, perhaps once more remembering what it felt like to sing on the snowy streets of Washington Square, as if we had really been there at the time when all those people were.
Comments
Post a Comment