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Fri | January 20, 2006

The Pond

For the second day I watched the striking of The Pond, the ice rink at Bryant Park. Earlier today it seemed likely I would not, for once, spend lunch hour mentally palpating the problem of modern isolation. It seemed I might dine with the grad curriculum pods. I had somehow established a pattern of not eating with them, because I had errands to run every day for the first few weeks I started working again back in Oct/Nov. Then other things... the end of which was, I think, that I grew to like my time alone, which I used to reflect and collect my thoughts. Or browse the magazine section at Coliseum. One likes anything if one spends enough time with it.

So while the prospect of actually speaking during the day, and engaging in conversation, was overall favorable, my first thought in response to the proposition was that I would miss seeing the breakdown of the park. It all neutralized to a feeling of indifference when it was 1:30 and I was too hungry to wait around, for them to get back from whereever they were, and considered that they might have left without me.

And so I sat in the park as usual, though slightly differently, as today I sat by the buddhaesque statue of Gertrude Stein.

I went ice skating twice. Once last Wednesday after work; again on Monday night. On Wednesday it drizzled and there weren't many people. On Monday, the last day of skating, the people moved in a herd, like rush hour. At a uniform and moderate pace.

When there are masses, everything is average and everything is rational. Much like contemporary fiction. It proceeds in its perfectly orchestrated and thus completely dead manner.

The kids do it right. They speed. They stop short, they cut corners, they go whereever they see an opening. They flail their arms, tumble, and are up again, frosted with shaved ice. Only they get the thrill of skating.

Both times, I scuffled in the perfect loop for a good thirty to forty minutes, in an extended warmup. Eventually I picked up the pace. I learned it is actually easier to skate if you go faster. It was only the third and fourth time I had skated ever. It is too bad I didn't start earlier in the winter.

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