outside

I make the city bearable by getting outside of it. There is a beauty in the racket of Chinatown at dusk, yes, but it is not the kind of beauty that wears my heart out. I seek the wider spaces. This weekend: forge the city to where it drops off, a beach - a stretch of sand, some dunes, the waves roughing me up, small stones stuck to my skin. And a chocolate milkshake from McDonalds, because a wet bathing suit needs no encouragement. Then to the High Line with cold tea, the wooden planks sturdy and almost truly worn. Evening, we go to Prospect Park with a salad of couscous, basil, and cherries. The fireflies come out. Walking home, knee-deep in white wine, someone has set up telescopes on the sidewalk. "You wanna see?" In one, a paper cut-out that they tell me is Saturn, the rings clearly visible, the whole thing a joke - a cosmic joke, of course, it's real, it's out there, I can't stop laughing. And the moon, which I have to squint to take in full, the dark side hungry and wide, the surface like dust on a windscreen, like a moth in my hands.