Central park near the reservoir

A couple of weeks ago, with my head cloudy and the sky very blue, I went for a walk around the reservoir in Central Park to clear my mind. The reservoir is famous and so it should be. It’s not quite round and stretches most of the way across the park from about 88th streets to, I don’t know, 95th? Now it’s named after Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, as the new signs say with their curly que’s, and it opens up a space in the green and the trees of park where you can walk and look outwards to the blocks and steeples and flags of the apartment buildings that line 5th avenue on the East and Central Park West on the you-know. It’s about a mile and a third to walk around the reservoir, which was built to provide water for the city but then just left for show, and at either end there are a couple of old water buildings, and I never know inside which one it was that Dustin made Lawrence eat the diamonds in Marathon Man. A little spit of something stretches down the middle of the reservoir as a perch for the seagulls and ducks that live there and on fine days, like the one a couple of weeks ago, there are fountains in the southern reaches of the reservoir. Fountains like I like them, not with the marble curlicues or anything, just, uncomplicatedly off to one side of the spit, flinging water into the sky without a worry.

The reservoir is lined with a low fence. It used to be much higher (see MMan) but now you can step up and take a hold of it to look over the water and feel the wind and look at the buildings. The path around the reservoir is pleasantly gritty and a great attraction for joggers. To walk around the reservoir you must step into the circuit of runners and walkers – an adult crowd compared to the rest of the park (perhaps children are not so excited by the pleasing lap-sense the reservoir gives) – and take your chances. The prevailing direction to walk or jog is anti-clockwise. A couple of weeks ago I went against the crowd and earlier today, under different circumstances, I went with them. It is more interesting going against the running crowd because you can see their faces.

Two weeks ago, under the sun and the blue, there was a lot of traffic going around the reservoir. It was November still but with the trees being autumn, the water reflecting happily and a nippy, hopeful little breeze, it was a time of optimism. You could see it in the joggers with their college sweatshirts and cd players clawed clammily in their hands, you could see it in the birds as they wheedled and freewheeled, dillying and chucking themselves, you could see it in the fountains as they simply threw water around. It was golden. It was an afternoon for breaking your reservoir running records. Every runner was out, some of them bouncy and lithe, others hauling themselves, bits of feet all over the place. The conversations of the reservoir-walkers were more complex: there were a lot of complaints out on the circuit, but they were complaints tinged with confidence. The afternoon was conferring power. Walking against the grain, I only ever got one or two second snippets of parkside chat, but you could extrapolate freely.

“…. well why don’t you just take a couple of weeks and then…”
“that is the thing, that’s what they do, they seduce you…”
“…. look, I’m not, I’m not going to, you know? How many…”
“…………. I always say..”
“fuck them… you know? It’s not about that anymore…”
“…. the job is right for me, but the…”
“48 dollars, can you believe that?”
“…… I KNOW! He never thought to mention….”
“… are you?”
“… actually from my parent’s attic…”
“no, I mean, we met a couple of times in…”

And etc. I walked around twice and with the sun going down, sliding down the buildings and the constant changing view, I felt stronger for my time there but a little unworthy among all the speeding health, all the action plans, job changes, breakups, bargains and get togethers being plotted, fomented on the gritty path.

Today was different. Today the sky was frowning. Above the east side it was one dimensional, a medium spread of grey. The west was different, a ruddy-layered-grey-going-green-going-blue-metal moving slab. It looked hard indeed up there. And the wind blew. The wind blew straight from south to north, rasping along the water, whipping it nastily into little chops that flicked water onto the ducks backs and in their eyes. They were all hunched, necks nothing, frowning. Brown leaves were slapped against the side of the reservoir and the trees were bare. The joggers – and there were much fewer of them – behaved again like the animals. Today was a day to tick off. Just get round. Nothing flashy. No high kicks for the ladies today my friend, this is a pain day. The walkers were similarly sparse and more reverential to the weather. I only heard one little fragment of conversation, everyone else was silent, lips slowly chapping, hands in gloves, eyes mincing in the wind. The only thing I heard (words all over the place in the wind) was a man saying to a woman, “the water… the city… the sky.” Which seemed to cover it. I only walked once around the reservoir today but dawdled and walked about because the weather was softening, and soon the great slab was opened up into pieces of blue and the sun sat squarely, like a desk lamp on its side, blasting yellow through Columbus Circle – at the south west corner of the park. The light came through the trees and you were sucked towards it. As I came close to that corner of the park I suddenly saw yellow and orange in the trees and saw that the sun was spreading light on the shoulders, the collarbones of the buildings around the park, splashing them and turning the clouds pink. Then, quickly, it was over, and the park was grey again and a rollerblader came by in a very tight outfit.