Suffering and Not Suffering in Riverside Park

04/03/2022

Suffering and Not Suffering in Riverside Park

Yesterday I met some friends at 74th Street on Broadway. We went into Fairway*, bought some drinks and snacks, and walked over the the park, where we found an empty table and two benches to sit.

*The uptown Fairway at 125 has closed, but the flagship store at Broadway doesn't appear to have changed in the wake of a bankruptcy -- it's still packed with food and customers jockeying for position -- although the novelty of a gourmet supermarket has perhaps worn off a bit since I first discovered it twenty-five years ago. I was a little dismayed to find that self-service checkout has replaced many of the staffed registers, but given the long lines filled with what I found to be a surprising number of mask-free UWSers (probably Biden supporters), I nevertheless tried to use one. I required assistance from the supervisor for approximately eight out the ten items I scanned and the register froze when I tied to pay, so everything had to be transferred to a new (staffed) machine. As I often do, I fantasized about living in different system that incentivized companies to hire real workers instead of replacing them with inefficient machines.

Even though it was only fifty degrees out, we didn't get cold because our table was directly in the path of the afternoon sun. After enduring a week of freezing temperatures, the trees and flowers were coming to life.

I'm familiar with this section of the park, but only by way of having run through it many times in the course of completing a run of at least ten miles. (This section of the park is five miles from my house.) I hadn't done such a long run in long time, however, since late 2020. Maybe soon, I thought, if my knee continues to get better.

Or maybe not. It was nice to spend some time here without feeling like I was about to suffer.

Posted at 12:49 PM in Expression, Science Projects | Permalink

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Music: Death Culture at Sea and Saturnine

Listen or download songs and records from my indie-rock past with Saturnine here and Death Culture at Sea here.

Music Video: Remembrance of Things Past

Watch the rock opera Remembrance of Things Past written and performed by Saturnine and Frances Gibson, starring Bennett Madison and Sheila McClear.

Video: The Chaos Detective

The Chaos Detective is a series about a man searching for 'identity' as he completes assignments from a mysterious organization. Watch the first episode (five parts) on YouTube.

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Expression//Reaction//ScienceProjects

04/03/2022