b h a g . n e t visual and conceptual exchange b h a g . n e t
COLD NIGHT—15 February 2002
It's freezing cold today. Last night too, the night before Valentine's Day. It was a night for errands and a late dinner out. I did my laundry (at a place with a car racing video game, though I only play it when my ladyfriend and I are there together). Then at 9:45pm, laundry folded and dry and home again where it belongs, I exchanged my warm room for dark Brooklyn streets and headed for the 24-hour General Post Office in Manhattan. The wind whipping down Lorimer Street was enough to bring tears to the eyes. It was a happy wind I suppose, but just really cold. I was so relieved to escape from the wind into the L train station that I gave two dollars to the first panhandler who approached me. Well, actually I asked for thirty-five cents back (I saw it in his palm, and he had asked for a subway token, which costs a dollar fifty), which means I was so relieved that I gave a dollar and sixty-five cents.
The trip on the L to the E and the Penn Station stop was quick and the Post Office is right across Eighth Avenue. I mailed the packet (some stuff for my parents) and was back on the train in no time. Even so, mailing this packet was going to amount to a two hour roundtrip from Brooklyn, and two hours in the freezing cold to mail a letter just wouldn't have felt like time well-spent. So I took the L train just as far as Union Square and the 6 train south, down to Astor Place for the short walk to Taishou, a Japanese place I like. I ordered a rice ball with salmon, miso soup, and one Nigori sake, and read the last few pages of the first chapter of Yvon Chatelin's new book about John James Audubon.
I was struggling through the French text, word by word, and then something happened. I accidentally read a whole sentence in a flash. Sentence by sentence would be much faster than word by word, so I tried making it intent rather than accident. The meaning of each sentence now flowed into my brain with the ease of a single word. Eventually I stumbled into enough unfamiliar vocabulary that I had to slow again. But now I know I can go for the whole French sentence first and make word by word reading a last resort. Maybe I'll try that in English too.
Trains home were scarce, as is usual late at night. The MTA workers, in their dayglo orange vests, climbing up and down ladders propped on the tracks, was a signal that the wait for the J train would be a long one. Walking into the wind again, it was 1:30am when I rounded the corner from Leonard to Meserole Street and home. I had such a feeling of anticipation as I turned the key in the lock and opened the door—from the exposure of open air to the shelter of roof and walls. The fifty degrees of the front room was a life-saving step from the freezing air outside. My life was in no danger, but that was precisely because I could make that step with the simple turn of a key. I was glad I had given that two dollars to the old fellow at the L station. Actually, it was a dollar sixty-five.
© 2002 John Clay