It doesn’t feel like a Saturday. It’s overcast outside and looks like it might rain. It doesn’t feel like a Saturday but I don’t know what day it does feel like. I spent most of my day inside reading “A Million Little Pieces” on and off. I would go work on a doll project, then come back and read. I would take some pictures, then come back and read. I would get up and sing and dance to my favorite song playing on my iPod then sit down and read some more. Who knew I could be so hooked on a book written by a fraud written almost seven or eight years ago, made hugely popular by Oprah and then torn down just as low by the discovery that much of it was embellished lies, although it claimed to be the biography of the author. Well, lies or not, I am loving it. I am in it. It’s no cakewalk and it even brings up some anger and frustrations in me at people I’ve known like this but I push on because the way he describes his horror is just, I don’t know. It’s meaty. It’s substantial. It feels real. And I like it when people tell the truth. HA! But this is not the truth right? It’s a well-told story, awful, painful, scary, but from someplace real. I don’t know who put it in book exchange at work and I don’t know why I chose but I think ironically, I picked it up, because it was the only one that didn’t seem to bullshit me. Ha again!
So anyway, after being in the apartment for a while, I feel like I’ve been inside too long. I do not want to turn on my computer. In fact I loathe the thought. Fuck Facebook right now. I need to just be. It’s murky out but I need some air, real air. So I put on my H&M head scarf that I’ve had forever, the only pair of jeans I have left with no holes in the inner thighs, my simple brown Montego Bay sandals that are worn and old and comfortable and I take the mini freebie umbrella I got from the opening of Forver 21 on Times Square, my cell phone and “A Million Little Pieces” because as I’ve mentioned, I can’t be without that book until I’m done reading it. I open my door and look around the hall as if I’m sneaking out of prison and I head down and out across the street to Marcus Garvey Park. I walk slowly around the periphery, heading to the west side, not quite sure what I’m doing, if I’ll just stroll around the park if or if I’ll go sit down. Around the large baseball field, there are a small scattering of relatively “normal” looking people sitting, talking, texting so I feel okay about sitting after all. I immediately wish I had peed before I left though. I’m not sure how long I can be out here while I need to pee. Naturally, I didn’t notice I needed to go when I was walking over here but now that I’m about to sit, the desire overcomes me.
I sit on an empty bench a feet from the baseball field. My face has been in this book for so long that my eyes are not adjusted to the outside light yet. I sit and look around for a bit and then I pick up the book and read for a while. James Frey is angry, angry and violent and hurting and he’s walking through the woods on a trail outside the treatment center. But someone has followed him, someone who is there to help. Not someone who is there to miraculously cure him, because he is beyond that, but someone who is there to guide him from one stone to the next because he needs that. His rage is consuming him, and he will die without beauty as most of us would.
I put down the book again and just stare out at the baseball field. There must be about thirty little birds out there pecking in the dirt. There is one squirrel. There are several pigeons spread around. One of them walked by me, just a foot or so away. I don’t want to go back inside I tell the pigeon telepathically because I really don’t feel like talking at all. The pigeon keeps moving. I pick up my phone and visit flickr for a minute and find that a contact I like has left some really nice feedback on several shots I took yesterday evening. I’m surprised and I smile as I scroll through looking at each one. Then I put it down again and start reading again. A girl and her mom go by and I’m still reading but the sound of her mother yelling at her to come one makes me look up from my book. “Symphony come on!” Her mom is already almost twenty feet ahead of her. Symphony is directly in front of me, wearing a pretty golden yellow top and skirt with her hair out all wild and unbraided. Symphony has her fingers wrapped inside the wire fence surrounding the baseball field and is shaking it repeatedly. She’s not going anywhere until she’s done. I look back into my book. But I notice that after a few seconds, when her mom stops yelling, something like an silent alarms inside her jerks Symphony back to awareness and she takes off after her mom but she stays behind a bit jumping around and letting her body hang and swerve like a drunk person. Kids are funny.
I read some more before putting the book down again and feeling a breeze pass through my shirt. I breathe in deeply. I like the wind. It’s so different from an electric fan or the air conditioner. It’s alive. It carries things with it. It ebbs and flows and never blows the same way twice, like beach waves. It doesn’t get bored. Listening to that AC for hours sometimes makes me feel crazy. I understand the need for it in this kind of weather but I don’t really like it. I can never really get my mind around the fakeness of it what it might be doing to me. I also hate the fact that I had to put on a bra just to walk across the street and sit in the park. I hate bras times a million but people get offended by unleashed breasts, which is one of the hundreds of reasons why people make me sick. Just being in this park, I had to check around me, see who was near me, make sure no crazies or perverts were near just to be able to relax to feel safe. Fucking retarded. At some point after I started reading again, I heard the moving of dry leaves crackling behind me, and then a steady stream of water. But I wasn’t alarmed. I looked behind me and it was one of the Parks Staff watering the heck out of a tree with a long hose he had pulled down through the gate from the sidewalk. I swear he was there watering that tree for like fifteen minutes. But the sound of the water wasn’t so bad. When he was done, I kind of missed it.
I started to sink deeper into my surroundings and was just staring into space with my chin on my hand when a man walked by and said, with what sounded like a slight Caribbean accent, “Ya tinkin?” I smiled and maybe nodded but said nothing. I didn’t feel like talking. Yes, I was “tinkin.” But I have no idea really what I was “tinkin” about. I just needed that moment. The man walked down far from me to sit a few benches away and I went back to reading again for few minutes. I was still relaxed but my radar was up. The sad thing is, safe or not, I’m always wary of strangers. I always have been, always been annoyed at people who I feel are encroaching on my privacy or alone time, ever since I was a girl. I always figure, why would anyone want to bother someone who’s alone?
What do you want from me is a question that runs through my head about ten times a day. And when the man walked by, it peeped in my mind as well. He talked but kept walking which was good, but he was still there. I knew I was about to leave soon anyway. The urge to pee, which I had completely forgotten was back. As I got up, I heard the man call out, “Ya leavin?” I smiled and mouthed yeah, then waved. He waved back. Maybe he was okay. Who knows? This world has made us all fearful of everything and nothing. I would love to come to a park and sit quietly or noisily with a few people I’ve never met before who I knew were not out to hurt me in any way. Old, young, black, white, yellow, brown, I don’t care. That’s what parks are for. Maybe one day. Not today.
