Yoga-quick : Bryant Park, NYC

The yoga has begun and the babbled amalgamated voices are usurped by the voice recording through the speakers. Grey gravel shuffled by feet, unnumbered, walking encumbered. Feet on chairs resting in black shoes. A field of people inhale and exhale in unison, lie on their backs. The fountain: sprinklingly weak, unassuming. Trees, traffic, buildings. Satchel and a man walking, coffee-holding. Waving bald man. Backpacked companion takes a picture. Black dress, bare-back triangles showing.

Right hand to the left and hold.

Wow, that big green building with two runners in the window. Like a big aquarium. Aquarium green, housing so many ecosystems and recirculated air.

Everyone in the field on their hands and knees, looking up to the sky. On the exhale they look down. I look around. I look around. For what? for what is quick. For a glossed description. Ah! there is a Goethe here, by the carousel. And a Gertrude Stein sits among her rolls of stone girth, silent.

If you want to do yoga here, prepare to get your picture taken. If you are a building here, prepare to get your picture taken.

When they exhale, they raise their rumps to the sky, towards me and all who are behind them. They all look quite good from this distance. Good, fit and flexible, but this is only distance's deception. All right legs up! Some pigeons hold a pow-wow while tearing up stale bagel strips. Screech metal breaks, low rumbled bus moans, big truck mumbles, bark of the cop cars, dopplered honk. Rattling bag, skiffing step. The wall of buildings split in one place, through to the sky towards Port Authority, marked by the weak fountain.

Yet still we have not arrived at what is quick., what is essential, living, viscid. It is my own fog, my own haze, my own intentionality of method. But! there is a lazy security guard stroll. His lazy jaw chewing gum, sweat-wiping towel, blue-green, tucked in his blue shoulder-strap. The trees are always the quickest. They abide by the breeze, are rooted and flow naturally, while all around is construction.

Up hands! Fingers stretched. Others just lie on the grass. I would quite like a cigarette to put this all in perspective. Here we are! The carousel has been caroused! And there we have all the fun of life. Around, with no destination, up and down on a frozen animal, up and down these yoga breaths. With lights and sound the carousel turns, a tired metaphor before it even began.

Two lovers lie, the man's head on her belly her hand on his chest. Eyes closed resting against the grass. A girl in a blue dress photographs what she sees. A much clearer picture than these black and white odd shapes. Now she strokes his hairs. Light, wired curls. The woman in the black waves to the black building holding to her ear a black phone. a pink-shirted stretch. Do these humans on this page have necks? breath? yes, the inhale and exhale, the turning craned looks of walkers and passers by. The graying hair on the man who just sat down, wide, sloped nose and perma-scowl side-mouth lines. The girl now has a book as someone asks where they are eating. She is not as resting as her blue-jeaned lover with the wire-curly hair, though she still finds a hand to stroke his face, the goatee and the brow, specifically. Large leaves, green leaves, red leaves, vines in a big pot.

Slovenia is the only country that has 'love' in the name.

Blue skirt Alenka now has a name and is taking pictures again. Green white weathered tent top, carousel stopped spinning. And another, a man with a gray pony tail. Grey under auburn. The ding and we are done with another line. Big brown bag strung across the shoulder. These heavy words are not so quick, they fall heavy, unflowing. Today has been a sweaty day for words.

And now they roll up their mats, fix their wedgies, adjust their leotards. Burgundy colors on the umbrellas. A pale yellow folding from the long brunette hair. Both flowing and flapping in concordant motion. Little pink shoes trip and fall. All the fit women now yoga-walk themselves over to their new destination, spiritually cleansed and deflatulated. And all the while the constant churning noise of people. People, cars, and horns.

The sun is pale yellow, like the flapping brunette's blanket sinking in the split between buildings, soaking in haze and cloud. The old woman, neck-clinging hair, hoola-hoops black orange stripes and rotates slowly clockwise as it wobbles and falls around her knees. The little pink shoes play in a purple dress, being photographed playing with a tab from that food-trodden grey gravel. A dog and a toddler. My good god. How wholesome. The dog is brimming with affection. The toddler loves the dog. Alenka loves to take pictures. The dog wags nervously and looks to his owner. Everyone has fun at someone else's expense.

Urbanal : Morningside Park, NYC

Urban parks. What are the animals in an urban park? We have the graceful pigeon: the winged vermin. We have ducks in the green water, bread-gobbling. There is the occasional smaller bird I will call the diminutive sparrow. There is the large fly, ceaseless in its plotting, rubbing hands in evil contemplation. And there are humans walking dogs, picking up poop with plastic-bagged hands.

The trees are beautiful, splotched with greens, tall, leafy, handsome. Some wisps by the water, by the water falling green-foamy from the rocks up by the caution tape. And the soothing sound of rushing water aided by the soothing sounds of groaning traffic. A dump truck, a maintenance vehicle. Their flatulent gasps and groans. And to my left, more caution tape, yellow, black bold type, circumfrencing the playground, yellow and blue with all the floor stripped. No way to walk up the ramp or across the bridge with no floors anymore.

Mmm, hear that jack hammer in the background? And the dump truck is on the move again. Car alarms and buildings rising above the oh so green trees responding to the breeze and dappling shade down to us who wish to not sit in the heat.

The diminutive sparrows rustle in the dirt. They take dirt baths and fidget amongst themselves while the greater pigeons walk bobble-headed and pecking.

NO TRESPASSING. DANGER. These are the signs on the island in the middle of the green-grown lake.

The lamp posts are on and illuminating nothing but their own bulb's shape. Sirens and dump trucks. A bus honks. The sirens come closer, rattling their repeated warnings. The caution tape rattles in the wind, whipped and fluttering rattled ribbon of plastic. A coffee cup rolls back and forth on the ground as if a skiff on the calm high seas.

A small survey of the immediate vicinity around me yields: a Heineken bottle cap, a large bolt, a few cigarette butts, a shirt tag, various coiled pieces of string, a red expanded rubber band, more bottle caps, bits of plastic bags, and an assortment of different-colored foil scraps. Ah yes, and there is dirt, some leaves un-greening, and small rocks. One must learn to not look too closely, for to do so would be to miss the beauty of an urban space of green. An urban park is meant to be an amalgamation of these things. These things which seem so out of place, yet accepted by the pigeons, the trees, the grass, and diminutive sparrows, who harbor no resentment, who preen and let fall their feathers and leaves and abide by the sun.

And there is the field being sprayed by exuberant jets, by the sprinkler spouting catharsis. The baseball backstop and all the surrounding benches around the walkway giving walkers a place to plant themselves and view what? The plants perhaps? Their own regaining breath? It all fits quite nicely with the occasional surging cicada call.

And here I sit with all of it, half-content, half-annoyed but for that epic silent greenness provided by these indifferent trees, watching people without a blink come and go, being perched on by pigeons and diminutive sparrow creatures, seeing time unwind in such a slow process that the rise and fall of a building occurs like the dawn of each morning. And truly, these Harlem building fit in well. These trees fit in well. And I find I myself can fit in well, for a time, in a state, because I am here and waiting for it all to make sense beyond mere circumstance.

And if I look with the eyeless eyes of a tree, I can see the sidewalks crumbled with overgrown roots, the lamp posts swallowed up by vines, the buildings half-crumbled in dilapidation, grass grown over the bottle caps and butts, the benches stained with rain upon rain, and all that used to walk here gains an ancient mystery more beautiful that what walks now, but as the woman walking by the road has just said: "...and that's a nasty-ass waterfall, but it's all good."

An Uncommon Long Cable : Central Park, NYC

Quaint, we will begin quaint. By the trash can in the grass next to the roadside. Gravel crunching runners and bicycle wheels. Some grape juice and a few boxes of paper. A gate, some trees and a walkway.

"Where are these suckers?" Two bikers lost ahead. The buildings behind the sparse screen of trees, beyond the reservoir. Me, sitting patiently in a tie and a nice shirt: two dollars from the army of salvation. White dog. Glasses man. I love--heart--excuse me. I heart New York. Harry Potter conversation from a real life Ron Weasley. Kids kicking dust and interested in T-Rex. Electronic.

There is a bridge to the left built with large leafy swoops and colored the underside of a two-toned leaf. That grey-green subtle latticework of the underside of leaves. This man running, I type to his steps. So much green silence but for my own clacking. Distant city roars. Airplanes, a siren. Distant.

Large breasts find no rest on a jogger. Those rhythmic bosoms jouncing jollily with each progressive step. The bulky white man has dainty hands and a grass stain on his shirt.

The things that are quick. The parts of people that are quick.

The woman: pointy elbowed, bouncing blond pony tail. Walkers unquick but for their flannel. Woman in the sun, skin showing bony, skin-bathing, book-reading. Helicopters, helicopters, birds in the distance, buildings, helicopters. Back again so soon the quick, thin girl with the bobbing, bouncing pony tail. The walking man smells what's in his hand. Is it bark? Hashish? Feces? I long to know! and it is about time to light a cigarette...

Holy Moses and Karl Malone! here I am all alone with a cigarette and some burgundy, watching the clouds over me...

How to pee in Central Park: lie on your side as if you were sleeping. Unzip and unfurl. you must wait for the bursts and hope the dribble dries before you leave.

Once a cup is done it is time to move on. Dribble be damned! at least I have long shirt ends.

A bit more of humanity at the great lawn. Great shade under the great trees. Great breeze where children play on the grass. Where a fowl-mouthed, sour-mouthed man walks his golden retriever and a man sings incoherence while doing pull-ups next to the swing set. Just a half-a-cup's worth of time where the cops ride slow with sirens silent but red and blue flashing.

Again the look for the quick and it isn't always with humans. Bark formations of bent trees, slow in attaining, are quick with static aura; brown-green silent pulsating photosynthesis. Yes, these trees are quite quick. A girl jogs, her hair swishes. A man walks his bike. A man walks his dog. Everyone is going somewhere for a short while. Stroller. Red shirt striped white. Lollipop plucked out of salivated mouth. Cell phone. Cell phone. Cell phone. Hot pink woman unquick and sitting globy and leaning. Bad-form push-ups from the shirtless man parked bike to the right.

Stroller rides! That dad is quick! We'll get from here to there in a jiffy! Just jump on son and I'll pedal our little one across the whole damn park like lightning, scooter style.

Quick on the lawn the arch of Frisbee and the clap of mitts making catches. Floating orbs slow in motion for the minute of flight but sucked into leather-gloved oblivion, absolute for half a second.

The tall gawking bird-man is quick as a whip, his jerky step and headphones intent with stork legs bent (forward of course) but his eyes covered by sunglasses.

Slow, holding hands, both hunched, father-daughter saunter. Slow-coasting bald man grey-sweated shirt meandering two-wheeled. Kids and badminton. So nicely dressed, they must be English: Let's have tea in the gallery with father's mistress. Oh do! let's!

Time to go, I'm getting slow, let's hear what Herman Melville says: "There are your iron fists, hey? What a hold they have, too! I wonder, Flask, whether the world is anchored anywhere, if she is, she swings with an uncommon long cable."