artist's date: soho walk

I love to walk SoHo streets and soak in the urban artwork: random postings and graffiti that slap themselves irreverently across walls, poles, doors and windows, entertaining me, the slowly passer-by. After some uptown morning business last Saturday I drove downtown and parked...and walked... 

peering into holes in a fence;

gifting my sight with the texture of inconsistent order;

 

 

receiving a reminder for my frequent rumination...

 



on my way to lunch at a cafe I've never been to before.  I paused on the street to read the menu and the server who was standing outside smoking his cigarette told me that this was where I needed to eat.  Not long after speaking my order, the waitress places my garden salad on the chrome-topped table in front of me and as I take a slow, deep breath I can smell the sweet aroma of the cucumber quarters.  They taste like spring that is hoofing at the gate in our atmosphere (sun shining brightly but air too chilly to let it break through).  My coffee mug has a faint lipstick stain on the rim but today I am bold and  unfussy so I just wipe it away and turn the mug around. A Coldplay tune is on the radio overhead and now the waitress is sitting at a table perpendicular to mine with a basket of silverware and a pile of fresh white paper napkins  expertly wrapping the place settings while she awaits the completion of the next brunch order on the line. I bask in the light filtered from the skylight above and look at each object edge illuminated:  frosted plastic water tumbler, stainless steel fork and knife, green glass water bottle, the stainless caps to the salt and pepper shakers.  I turn my head millimeter by millimeter to the left and to the right and invite the refractions to feed my brain with their dimension. A sulky kid from across the room wonders what it is I am seeing and if he can see some too.

It's time to walk again and this I see and my heart screams YES.  I am laughing after I take this shot because a sweaty boy ran so fast right in front of me as I was focusing that he did miss being in the picture but startled me so I flailed on my feet.  Another man on the curb saw me jump and we laughed at how stupid people can be(me or him?) and he stooped to pick up my lens cap when it popped off and clankled on the sidewalk.

I saw him later walking down the sidewalk across another street.
 

And this, the last message of the day.  In my brain, after poked is giggled...and this giggle is what I have been lacking for many months. This word giggle has shown up in a few pieces recently and I know it is my spirit demanding that my mind lighten up.