I Love the Parks

So far, summer has been blessedly wonderful. I'm enjoying it as completely as possible finding time to walk in Riverside Park or along the walk right by the Hudson. Last weekend I did a meditational exercise which was to take a pad of paper, sit myself down and note what I observed for an hour -- physically observed with very little opinion or commentary beyond what things look like -- I admit I couldn't help throwing in notes that I wished I could identify birds by their song, and such like. It was a plesant exercise. I've certainly watched the way my mind loves to revert to reverie mode with the slightest lapse of physical attention. I think I may do the exercise again tomorrow which, being a holiday, counts as a weekend. The picture here is my favorite set of benches in Riverside Park which are at the north end of a large community flower garden, it's a horseshoe shaped row of benches with the west end usually in shade and the east end rarely in shade so one can choose depending on the weather.

When I sat there a few people were grubbing around in the garden and many people were passing by, only a few stopped and spend time on the benches. I became a bit interested in this sort of hunky guy -- he was approximately a contemporary of mine and far better preserved than most of this age. I just watched and enjoyed the his pecs, had no serious urge to go strike up a conversation.

WQXR, the classical music radio station has given bulletins about Beverly Sills' illness and I awoke this morning to hear she had died. They always play music by a person who's died, so before I got out of bed the morning host played an exerpt from the middle of the 3rd act of La Traviata where Violetta write a note to break off with Alfredo [having given in to the demands of horrible Papa Germond], the exerpt ended with "Adio" -- that section has Verdi's usual weeping violin notes and always brings tears to my eyes. So I was in tears to start the day. Berverly Sills was a fine soprano and a wonderful person in the NYC musical scene and, from all the anecdotes I've heard, a really wonderful woman. She deserved my tears this time, not Violetta.