Buildings, Blocks

Is a rule of thumb a stereotype? The length of a New York City block depends on which way you are travelling. To go from the southern edge Central Park to the intesection of Broadway and 7th Avenue you travel 14 blocks and, according to conventional wisdom, more than a mile. Turn left and go to Second Avenue, nearly the same geographic distance, but crossing 5 streets, 5 city blocks. And then you will have walked just over a mile and a half among the aggressive side walkers, everyone in black, your life woven around the fenders of brazen cabbies, your pockets stripped clean and your eyes heavy with the city that never sleeps.

Am I making sense? The difference between the vertical journey and the horizontal one, rapid ascendency and slow growth, one life and another.

A Warning About Bike Spokes

Do not get caught in the spokes of a bike, do not even dream about it. Don't wear pants when you use your ten-speed because you might image the hem being bitten by the wheel and then you're as good as caught.

But our bikes are all put away now, hanging from L-hooks on the garage wall, the front tire still spinning as voices climb the porch stairs to dinner. There is one that goes back and fro, to and forth, still, between 22nd and 23rd avenues, I see the wheels flash in the outstretched lumens of the street light. They flash twice, wink wink, like they know me. It's always the same two wheels, the same one bike, wink wink.

When I spoke, I said, "Na uh." Na, a song refrain. Uh, the shortest vowel in the English alphabet after i. And me, only five feet tall.

Because when the wheel stops spinning the reflector catches a piece of the red sun coming in through the dim window and the light hits the red car and a scratch in the paint where I got too close to a 2005 Ford Explorer and left matching scars on our bodies. His big one and my little one. Two marks on our bodies, wink wink. And I am only five feet tall.