7:37 am on Mulberry Street. September 20 or 21, 2012.
Some days it’s hard to know what day it is.
San Genarro should be over, but the street is still lined with white plastic tents; every block the same variety of arepas and elote, airbrush tattoos, plastic fruit magnets, and cannoli.
Friday morning in New York feels like the day after something. Belle and Sebastian are playing in the cafe behind me, and I am undergrad, cigarette on 34th street, ironic, desperate.
How does music do that? How do fried Oreos and zeppolies do that? When was the last time I called my mother?
Not much happens before 8 o’clock in the morning, but everything could happen, which is what the man in the smoothie tent seems to be hoping for, awake and ambitiously blending fruits that will separate into pulp and water soon.
The man with a cigarette addresses the man locking his bicycle. He responds. “I just wanted to be able to get where I wanted like that.” He snaps his fingers and I know what he means.
I wonder how often we are responding to something else. “I’m a Cuckoo” floats out of the window behind me. A bag of sand split and spilt itself onto the street next to a leather bracelet tent. It must have happened last night. Or the night before.
” “, ditto like that