Central Park, Angels, and General Grumpiness

I really like this photo that I snapped about a year ago. I don't know who the guy is, but the angel is the Bethesda angel standing on top of the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. I like the way the guy's looking at her.

I was going to write a blog about how I live in the most amazing city in the world — New York City — with the most amazing park — Central Park — where I recently found a new favorite place on rocks at the edge of the lake. I was going to wax poetic about how, from this place, I can see a lot of my history: the neighborhood where I've lived for more than 30 years, the building I worked in as a miserable law secretary for 10, buildings where I did wretched temp work in the years before that, and how much better it is to work for S&H. But I couldn't take a picture of that place on the rocks or even get near it because as of a couple of days ago the Central Park Conservancy (which runs the park like a benign fascist) decided to seal a fence, blocking access.

The Central Park Conservancy is an agency I love to hate. It pumps millions of private dollars into this public land, does the most amazing renovations, and simultaneously makes decisions as if it were a private garden club. For instance, this spring, they directed the killing of the breathtaking Burberry bushes which have sent me into ecstasy for the last 25 years with their changing fall colors. The morning I saw their guillotined stumps, first I cried, then I asked why, and when I learned it was because somebody at the Conservancy thought they got in the way of sight lines, I raged.

I was going to write about Strawberry Fields, the John Lennon memorial funded by Yoko Ono, five minutes from my apartment, which attracts people from all over the world. If you stand at the entrance for a minute, you'll likely hear 10 different languages spoken. But I couldn't get a good picture because one of the drug addicts who hangs out there kept intruding into the frame as he did his fundraising con-job spiel for unsuspecting tourists.

I was going to write about a lot of things, but stuff got in the way of my good intentions. I kept getting grumpy. I'm sorry I'm so grumpy. Really I am.

My friend Trish Corbett, who with her partner Michael Mannion runs the Mindshift Institute, was a fantastic skier when she was younger. She once explained to me that equilibrium is not about staying in one balanced spot, it's like zigzagging when you ski — it's about how fast you adjust from one extreme to the other. The equilibrium is in the constant adjusting.

So back to that photo. The Bethesda pool is where Jesus is believed to have healed people. Sometimes that pool was "disturbed" by an angel. I wonder if that man is disturbed by the fact that I was behind him taking his picture. Maybe being disturbed is not so bad as long as you remember to zag after you've zigged. Maybe I should take a dip in that pool the next time I'm feeling grumpy, and if the Central Park Conservancy Gestapo tell me to get out, by the time they grab me I'll have zigzagged so fast so many times that I'll no longer feel grumpy. In fact I may feel so sweet that I'll grab their steely Gestapo hands and pull them into the pool with me.

Hey, is anybody reading these blogs? If so, drop me a line! I promise I won't be grumpy when I answer.