Madison Square And You

Madison Square in an elderly May where the dogwoods bloom and the London planes thrive. Where the Pagoda grows and the Black locust lives, where the warm colors of Cornelian Cherry dance on the ends of branches. From a bench, I watch the clashes, the natural ebbs, and the natural flows. Some rays break through the crowns of the trees and cast a light upon the grass below. A grass greener in contrast to the avenue beyond the gate, beyond the unlit lampposts reaching the grime that coats the street. There’s a peace here, the sounds of the City are muffled, never completely silent, and seldom are they still. The cacophony from the insects, the crooning house sparrow, the scurry of the squirrels, and the pollen suspended in mid-air. The sound of nature is deafening, a leaf falls the kingdom knows it. Everything here has a purpose there is nothing out of place. Cumulus clouds cut out against a baffling blue the breeze moving slowly blowing softly through the people. They sit near and far some by the fountain or child’s playground. I have a place inside the kingdom, and I come here to remember. Madison Square where I divot the earth and lay my roots. I cover them with dirt and sprinkle water over the top I am planted on a bench peering through the locust trees. I’ve become a fixture of the park like the Crabapple or English elm. Spring is in her full swing and summer is on his way.

The base of the locust was vacant, the roots protruding from the dirt. The seat was seemingly made for her as she sits and reads her book. So fragile does she settle, crossing her legs, she hones in on a relaxed position; she could hold that pose for long. The crook of her neck follows sentences and paragraph indentations, and her eyes jump from ellipses to ellipses, especially if reading Céline. Has she dived headfirst into the world of Marcel Proust? Is she gorging on the love stories of D.H. Lawrence or is she running the road with Kerouac? Something about a woman reading, something strikes me and strikes me quick. The stillness in her physiognomy and primordial urge to nest and make comfortable. The way she brushes away a fallen lock of hair so as not to disrupt her eye-line. The way she must use her entire palm to hold the book, the delicate nature of her hands. 

She is pretty like a woman in a Volegov painting looking at the surroundings her head turned away in the moment before we lock eyes. She wears long dark hair, straight, ending at her lower back. Dark eyes and a café skin tone. Her eyes like black holes, eyes I could fall in, there is a lightness behind them though, they say so much yet stay so silent allowing the light to speak for itself. She wears a red dress with little white dots that falls like water, falling between the curvature of her legs acting as a veil shielding her from the perils of nature. Her ankle strap sandals are secured tight, integral to her function. She needs not for makeup or artificial concealer; she presents herself to nature as nature itself intended. To house her the Black locust stretches his branches just an inch further to adequately protect the creature at his base. A ray of light catches her face, and a golden sheen shines brightly off her cheeks. She is more real than the air I breathe. 

She has become a part of the tree, a part of the park in the same way I have. We are the same, but she outpaces my attempts to hold her. When she shifts, she shifts with a resplendent softness, the gaiety with which she moves. She is so pleasantly placed among the boxelder bugs and bees, the mantis, and the ant. She was made for nature and her existence is justified against the sky and the trees, the bark chips, and gravel pieces. 

Amidst the foliage there is still a chaos all around us; it never ceases or seems to abide. Some argue, screaming into a telephone or gripe to a co-worker about some insignificant trifle. Others are pushing strollers, walking dogs, clutching shopping bags, or just passing through. In the buildings that surround us, the careerist slaves away. Clocking in or clocking out, attempting to satisfy an arbitrary array of amoral duties. In the chaotic commotion, our subject remains still. Lost inside a book or more fitting, finding her way through the twists and turns like operating a spindle pulling apart sentences, and forming new ideas. She may read from a book of Keats’ poems and take note of the ekphrasis in Ode on a Grecian Urn or maybe she is studying the traditions of Victorian art as she finds the postmodern pieces vapid and lacking in spirit. There is a peace she is creating, removing herself from the backbreaking demands of mundane modernity. She has made it to the only place that can fully appreciate her worth. The place where American hornbeam and Chinese elm live together in a choreographed dance of rocks and root systems. The place where the crookedness of trees says nothing of their strength. I haven’t taken my eyes off this creature. I am far enough away to where I am not a nuisance or a bother just another human being planting roots inside this park. A woman reading demands her harmony leaving all her stones untouched and unturned. I am prepared to stay here, exactly here in this location no change to the coordinates and no desire to uproot. For the moment I am content to watch her, to feast upon the tangible result of witnessing her candor, to gaze and wait, patient as every new movement was borne from her mind, unaltered, chosen in that moment.

She is what darkness intends to destroy; she is wholesome at a cost to herself. The ease with which she could conform to the demands of a degenerating society and reap rewards concerning the social, granted for her conformity. Yet, she forgoes what most cannot pass up. She holds on to innocence and wears it effortlessly through her days, under locust trees or coal mines she shines in natural beauty, beauty for beauty’s sake. I can see her face through the dust storm of ordinary men. She dances through the thicket of meaningless conversation, through the swirling tornados of dust devils attempting to sweep her off her feet, but she is not so easily swayed or convinced as she knows her worth. She knows the assets with which she wagers and seldom shares the table with insignificant men. Her likeness sculpted in The Veiled Lady; a woman of grace and modesty yet carries a weapon to soften a brute. A weapon capable of both destruction and creation. A weapon that knocks me at the knees and weighs heavy on my heart. I wonder if she knows her power. The grand calamity of the universe set her in my sights and for whatever explanation may exist outside of Madison Square I care not for it. 8 Million and verging on the side of saturation the island is home to both of us, just big enough to house this happenstance and small enough to ask her name. 

She has stopped reading and now just sits and stares. She is breathing in and breathing out like a child in late May air. I pray to whoever created her that she stays a moment longer. Stay where she is sitting; stay inside the peace she found. I’ve drawn more from her than any drink I could pour. I’ve shot glances with intended effect. I just wish for her to notice me and feel what I have felt. I wonder if she suspects I am writing of her and maybe I should ask now that she is no longer preoccupied, her face no longer down inside a book. I am curious about her particulars, her name, her age, where she is from, and where she intends to go. I hope her life is full and only ever knows the smallest of grief. I wonder if she is like me, nowhere to go, nowhere to be. Maybe we could spend what time is left in the day over coffee or apéritif.

Now she has parted, an emptiness takes her seat, a darkness long, a darkness deep. I hope for her return one day, as does the locust tree.

But wait…she’s left behind an object of which I can make the size and color but none of the other characteristics. The same thing that created her is now providing the cause to chase her down the sidewalks of mutilated faces and misaligned morality, through the total sum of all human banality and land on what is the only island in an ocean of refuse and spent personalities. I gather my things and shoot to the tree where moments before I watched her reading, alive and living. I shoot to the Black locust and recover what she has forgotten. I can be of use to a woman that has no idea of my existence yet needs me for full recuperation. The item is glass, small in size like that of a baseball with a small spritzer on top. I imagine it to be some sort of perfume bottle and truthfully, that fact bears little distinction in the grand scheme. She could have forgotten a wallet or a pencil and I would still chase after her as if her life depended on it because, in some ways, I think it depends on mine. 

She couldn’t have made it past 23rd street yet so I knew I had time to catch up if I set out that moment. She had set out south towards the Flatiron building and would probably be caught at the intersection waiting for a walk sign. I ran, and when I say I ran I don’t mean that my feet simply touched down and then sprang up again off the concrete. I mean, I ran on top of the pavement my toes never touching the surface, I was moving with a purpose that gravity itself was surprised to see, earthly physics were no match as I had a perfume bottle to return and someone to meet. Making it past the Shake Shack that plagues Madison Square I saw her red polka dot dress crossing 23rd with twelve seconds left on the countdown clock. The time moves towards zero in what feels like a blink of an eye. I made it to the crosswalk with one second to spare and removed any hesitation I had about firing like a cannonball across the busy intersection.

I made it to the other side and caught glimpses of her through the backs of ordinary men unaware of the anomaly shared with them in the placement of steps and forward motion. Still, in a dash to catch up, I was making ground as her aura began to shine against the sun, competing against the lightness while proclaiming her own. I made it to the point where I could reach out and touch her.

“Excuse me, Miss.” My first attempt was in vain as she concluded the voice could not be addressing her.

“Miss, Excuse me.” She turned this time in further investigation and for the first time, her eyes met mine. 

I had spent hours in the park that afternoon falling in love with a stranger and if there was any hope of reciprocation it was surely in this moment. 

“Yes?” she said in an inquisitive voice. I could see the gears moving in her skull, I noticed that when scouring her mind, she delicately bites her lower lip and moves her eyes up to her forehead as if running a search of her brain for any inkling that may prove to be helpful in determining a causal link.

“You left this in the park, underneath the Locust tree.”

“Thank you, I had no idea, I can be so forgetful sometimes.” she said with a smirk, giggling softly. Her giggle grabbed me by the throat and ripped my larynx out. I handed her the bottle and she turned to proceed on her way.

“Wait.” I said.

She turned again smiling yet, confused, “did I leave something else?”

“No, I just uhm, my name is Jack and I noticed you in the park that’s why I saw you left the bottle behind.”

“Okay…”

“Aww shit, I’m sorry, I wasn’t watching you I was just struck by something when I saw you sitting underneath that tree and I was curious about what you were reading.”

Struck? Yeah, it’s Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupèry. My name is Gemma, by the way.

“Nice to meet you Gemma. I’ve never read any of him maybe I should check him out.”

“You should.” She said.

This time she appeared hell-bent on shaking me, but I just couldn’t let her go without heaving hope to the heavens, without a hail Mary in the thirteenth hour. 

“What’re you doing right now? Do you have time for a coffee? You could tell me about the book.”

“I usually don’t get coffee with strangers, but you’ve caught me on a good day, there’s a café up the street that serves a mean cup.”

A mortar fired off in my chest and as it climbed up to my cranium, I saw the flashes of color and heard the loud whistles. Instead of me chasing Gemma through New York streets we were now walking side by side down Fifth Avenue with the intent to share coffee and conversation. All of my suspicions of her would prove to be correct. Each character's sound forming words into sentences that spilled from her mouth was like none I’d heard before. Her eyes like tractor beams pulling me up into her spaceship. 

“So, where are you from? Were you born in the City?” I asked, hoping not to come across as prying or too investigative.

“My parents are from Kashmir, they moved to the States in 1998 when I was still a newborn. I first visited Kashmir when I was 20 and I go back about once a year.” 

“I studied art history at Columbia and now I’m interning at The Met. I love the classics I would like to teach them someday.”

“I have a brother and a sister, but they live where we were raised in Virginia.”

“I don’t go out to bars or clubs much; my idea of a good night is my tea kettle boiling and a blanket plus a good book. I think I got it out of my system in my undergrad years.”

“Masters? Yeah, I’m thinking about it but right now I’m just enjoying the City in spring. There’s something to be said about the City in these months, I don’t know, something about the daytime increasing and the coolness of the nights.”

“Maybe I’ll show you around The Met sometime. I can practice my teaching on you.” She ended with that giggle that tore out my voice box so all I could do was smile and shake my head in agreement.

Her voice was a rush of calming wind propelling me forward, her smile the path and her eyes the light to guide me. I covered our tab, and I asked if I could walk her home and she obliged with more comfort relative to the time I chased her down the sidewalk. She was softening, her guard was dropping. I knew inside that moment that I would protect her with every inch of my being. I would be dead and rotting before I would let the world and greater society disturb her and distort her purity into a weapon used against her. If nothing else, I can try to offer her the security and protection it takes to guard her and shelter her in a world where she can thrive and grow strong like the Black locust trees where I first found her. I knew Gemma was not a woman that men simply have sex with and move along from. She demands proof, she demands worthiness before she shares herself. A man must work for her, in the same way, he must till the land in order to cultivate. Her gifts were not given, they were earned.

A little while after we parted, she phoned to say that she had a pleasant evening and would like to meet again. She went on to explain that she rarely caught the attention of strangers and seldom dated in general. Something about her made me want to clean up like I was suddenly responsible for my own messes, and I would be damned to let them impede upon any potential progress I could make with Gemma. For the first time, I cared what somebody thought of me. I wanted to impress her and the lifestyle I enjoy would have to go by the wayside. 

Up for the task and fully enamored I walked back to the very same bench in the very same park with the very same perspective I had earlier that day. The perspective of the Black locust tree that just a few hours prior was home to Gemma if only for that afternoon. The tree was reeling or maybe that was my own projection, either way, something changed, whether it was me or the locust tree it was apparent Gemma was a comet entering my orbit and crash-landing inside my heart, and everything after this moment would take on a hue exclusively in her shade. She became a natural color like the Cherry Cornelians or the whites of the Dogwoods, the greens of the grass, or the shade of the locust tree. 

Cover Art: Volegov - Semi-Prone Woman Reading in Bed