Mulling

Softly rained upon night-time, air moving cool on my skin: face, hands, neck. The coquettish sky promises glimpses of star-pricked stratosphere in between the cloud. To anyone inside, the garden behind the hostel is invisible in the darkness. To me, the grass – and the single, monstrous tree – breathes relieved wetness. Because I can, and because, despite loose acquaintances, I haven’t made friends here, I’m standing alone on a lichened wooden picnic table at midnight, smoking a cigarette and idly browsing the yellow-lit windows.

New York lends itself to these contemplative fugues. The city’s an immense entity, and it pretends to not care a jot if you wander about it thinking deep thoughts at night. I think I can feel it paying attention, though; the gentle weight of it is just at my back.

I play along and ignore it. I watch the people indoors do what people indoors do; and I watch the rats, and I watch the roaches, and I chain-smoke and talk to the lonely tree.

Working It

New York City. I was told by an old hippy guitarist (relic of the expressive sixties, neither burnt out nor faded but weathered and hardened and diminished to his altruistic essentials) that it was the new Florence (renaissant), the only place to be in the twenty-first century. The city’s a bundle of sensation to me: it’s the smell of cigarette smoke on my fingers, in the folds of my clothes. It’s the pale strip of sky far up above the street. It’s the rattle-crash of subway trains in the filthy subterranean bowels. News-stands and their grubby owners; express and local on opposite sides of the platform; taking your chances crossing when the sign says ‘don’t walk’.

Just smile and let them hear your darling British accent and they’ll do anything for you, Robyina said. I let my personal mash-up of ragged-jeansed, roach-flicking bum and sweet English rose do its work. The city never denied me anything.