morning solitaire.

In the morning just before dawn, the streets of Manhattan take on another feel. There’s nothing like it, the calm before the storm of the day, before people are out on sidewalks and cars are out in streets all rushing to get from one place to somewhere else. There’s nothing like New York in the morning, (nothing like life in the morning!) before everything has a chance to get in the way and change it, change the stillness of the air, of your heart, of your mind.

In the morning just before dawn First avenue of Manhattan on 72nd street is quiet, the street lamps seem to flicker and change in a soft slow beat: Green. Orange. Red. Then everyone stops and I open the front door of my apartment and go downstairs (mind still quiet, still half asleep) and push out into the cold morning air. It’s like opening the door to a still and foreign world that is familiar yet altered.

The street is quiet but isn’t usually, however I have long since forgotten what the loud voices of its patrons sound like. They (like the city) have become second nature to me, have incorporated themselves into my life like anything else. They are automatic, constantly in the background of most of my waking evening hours (and sometimes early morning) and I’ve come to take a comfort in them in the same way I have knowing that this city is outside my front door.

Green. Orange. Red. I take off in the direction of the Park because the air this morning is cold and makes me think that the wind on the East River will be unbearable. I try to keep my mind quiet in the early morning hours, in the calm before the storm when I can feel - over Second, Third, Lexington - like this city is meant just for me. When else are the streets so bare that it’s easy to think that this great stretch of concrete is my home and mine alone? As I pass - over Park, Madison, 5th - I look up at the buildings with curtains drawn over windows and picture the people all still asleep, eyes closed in their warm beds still dreaming in their own quiet worlds unwilling to face the day.

I picture big Park Avenue beds with couples far away from each other on opposite sides. I picture small third avenue beds with couples entwined, with feet hanging over the side, arms flung over heads and warm slow breaths hitting someone else’s ear, the side of their face, their hair. What do they dream when they dream? What do they think of their lives when they’re awake?

Inevitably I’ll seen them all later. I’ll sit next to them on the subway and walk with them on the sidewalk, and sit in the office next to them. I’ll be a part of their lives (and they a part of mine) in the next few hours, and here I am out in the cold checking my watch and wanting the day to begin because I can’t help but think that I may never quite be that couple on Park Avenue or Third.

At 5th Avenue I take one last long look down that vast and open stretch of road that takes everyone everywhere, from so many places to so many other places all the time. To things they never expect, to people they never thought they’d meet, to distant future days that hold surprises and difficulties and all sorts of bad luck (I wonder: would we take certain roads if we knew in the end where they’d end up?). But for now everyone is asleep in their beds still unaware of what’s to come, still protected from the unknown.

Green. Orange. Red. I cross over 5th and pass over into Central Park. Picking up my pace I can hear, through the intermittent sounds of cabs whirring by - whoosh! - the faint patters of my feet hitting the pavement more quickly, moving me forward.

In the morning just before dawn, the streets of Manhattan take on another feel. It’s the same thing every day, it’s the same journey with different sets of thoughts through different sets of lights, but at the end of it I’m still the same person I was when I started out. Almost an hour later when I finally reach 5th again I walk back - Madison, Park, Lexington -and pass by windows with curtains now pulled open, (eyes wide awake), until I get closer to home.