Sunday, August 2, 2020

I walk carefully between the shadows of two power lines. The foot-wide path goes most of the way down this city block. The shadows and the path should be shifting their location, I think, as the days grow shorter. The movement is so subtle that I can’t tell in which direction they are shifting. I could probably calculate the motion, but the streets curve enough that I can’t recall whether this block goes north or west. When I look at maps of the neighborhood, I’m continually surprised at the directions in which I walk. I have never had much faith in euclidean geometry. It failed me for good in Greenwich Village, where West 4th and West 10th Streets meet. At the end of this block with the power lines, the Street of the Beautiful Heart turns into Kings of Israel Street and crosses Kings of Judah Street. Or maybe it crosses Kings of Israel and turns into Kings of Judah. I don’t notice the names of the streets anymore. I just know to cross at the corner, turn left, and go up to the pedestrian path, which takes me past two kindergartens and a vacant lot to the street of the Sons of Benjamin, where the bus stop used to be. I work on the Street of the Philanthropist, in a building named the House of the Philanthropist. But no one sits anymore at the far end of the street, where astroturf and benches once welcomed us. In the wake of the virus, the cafe named for the philanthropist has closed.