Magnetic Poetry

“I am the boy who can enjoy invisibility.”

Joyce wrote those words, but I have been singing them lately. Yesterday, as I walked around all day in Manhattan, from subway to library to park, I got the sense that maybe I was invisible.

People walked into me several times and none said anything. I was whacked with bags slung over arms, and time and again, nothing was said. But I could hear what was going on around me.

In Grand Central Station, a middle-aged rich-looking white woman said upon exiting a gift shop, to no one in particular, “Mag-ne-tic po-ih-tree. Hmmmmm. How about that. Magnetic Poetry.”

Some young woman swung a taxidermied skinned fox in my path (only she did not see it was my path), and her colleague shouted loudly in the direction of my ear, ostensibly to those behind me, “Don’t buy fur!” I never would, but I also really did not need to see a skinned fox. Oh well, maybe someone else did.

Two other young women were walking up 34th Street past a newsstand, and one of them said loudly, “Carrie Bradshaw always buys her cigarettes from a place like that.” Indeed she does.

Later, I went to see The Gates, in its last twilight afternoon. And all kinds of people were walking and talking in Central Park, and having the kinds of conversations they’d usually have (if they walk in parks usually). Only they were having them as they walked under “saffron” panels, flickering gently in a light wind on a cold February Sunday. The panels reminded me of three things:

1) Saffron robes (but, strangely enough, not as worn by Hare Krishnas),
2) Sunshine, and
3) The curtains which nurses pull around hospital beds.

A gay daddy pleaded, hopelessly, with one of his charges, “Christian, don’t go in the muh-hud!”

A little Latino kid called not-too-loudly to his mom, from a distance, “You are f***ing lucky!” before he darted off over a hill. I don’t think she heard him. I hope she didn’t, for his sake.

And as I walked, the invisibility continued until the sun was nearly setting.

Then suddenly, two young beautiful J. Crew-ed young things on vacation asked me to take their picture, and I knew I was visible again. (My heart was warmed that they were not afeared I would run away with the fancy photographic apparatus.)

I myself had only the most pedestrian of camera phones, with which I attempted to snap a few pictures, which will inevitably pale in comparison with those you’ve seen on the news.

Before I went to walk under Christo’s Gates, I was skeptical. I guess I still am. Was this a good use of $25 million, all things considered?

Maybe. Probably not. But…

It’s kind of like someone bought New York City a bouquet of flowers. We didn’t need it. In fact, lots of us could have used something much more practical. You can’t argue with that.
But who doesn’t like flowers (saving the allergic)? And Christo’s the kind of boyfriend who would not have bought us something else that we needed. Even if his girlfriend could have used a nice roasting chicken or a dozen eggs instead. He just brings flowers.

And, as far as practical value goes, well, this is a lot better than a tropical island wrapped in pink cellophane.

And it certainly got a lot of people, all kinds of people, out and walking around the mud-slick paths of Central Park.

Today they’re gone, and a nor’easter blows. Too bad. It would have been nice to see The Gates in a snowstorm.