Let me take you down . . .

Green, Central Park is green.
After three days of partying, concerts, and wandering gap-mouthed about New York City we walked over that relatively thin strip of concrete into that grass and tree surrounded area called Strawberry Fields. All I could feel or think was green as I watched a multitude of tree fleshes wriggling out their subtle happy dance to a light spring breeze beneath a startlingly open sky and a sun that without smiley curve still beamed out an infectious grin.
This happened during another vacation from my problems only this time I was in the company of two good friends of mine who where visiting on a real vacation. So after a couple of quick somber pictures around the Imagine memorial we (myself skipping) wandered into the park to find a place to smoke a joint. We settled on a cove of trees concealed conveniently on one side by a large rock. The spot overlooked, through the flicker of more green leaves, a corner of one of several Central Park ponds. After we crushed out a joint and emptied our pipe we moved to the water’s edge in full view of a busy restaurant and a boathouse. The bustling human activity coming from both these places was not nearly as interesting to me as the animal life in the park. Stoned enough to ignore the implications of an artificial pond stocked with non-native fish I was able to enjoy the company of turtle, grackle and cormorant contained in a place somewhere between zoo and wilderness.
Sully and Ed were around for two very fun weeks. We split the time between New York, Boston and New Hampshire. We saw Franz Ferdinand, Ben Harper (opened for by the surprisingly entertaining Henry Clay People) and the Tragically Hip (twice). We fished in the White Mountains. We made and ate some quality weed brownies and watched zombie movies. We listened to incredible jazz at legendary Wally’s Café. The whole thing was a great and memorable vacation from my but the afternoon in Central Park is the memory most vivid in my mind. The juxtaposition of city to nature has always intrigued me and stepping into Central Park out of the prison of New York with its city block sized cell bars was as striking to me as when I fell asleep on a flight leaving the vast silence of Alaska to wake up (save a quick trance like transfer in Chicago) just before landing in Boston where I stepped out into a cacophony of car horns and grinding construction.
Bored and distracted, last night I walked through the graveyard where Sully, Ed and I went to smoke joints. Once the winter had broke and the hawk at the other park did not return I changed pot smoking locations to an old cemetery instead of the park trading hawk and statue for the company of bat and headstone (and whatever is left of the hundred or so corpses rotting for almost three hundred years down in that peace and silence so elusive in our living world). The ancient oaks that overlook the small square of green as well as a few lumps of tombs provide adequate shelter from cops looking for a couple of guys smoking up or dog walking people who would find hanging out in a graveyard weird. It’s no Central Park but what it lacks in green space it makes up for in soul. The chipped and cracked headstones lined up uneven always makes me think of the grinning teeth of a wise old Indian.
As I walked I was faced with the tedious process of sorting out the scheduling of my upcoming medical tests and surgery. Pleasant thoughts were not on my mind. The weight of it all dragged on me. “Back to real life” Ed had said before I left them at Logan. “Yeah and my real life really sucks” I tried to joke except as soon as I said it I no longer found it funny.
Just before I walked out of the graveyard the evening breeze whispered through the sturdy oak leaves. I looked up into the closest tree. A robin was perched there and it gushed out its evening song. My gaze followed the tree back down from the leaves to the roots where I saw one thick and tenacious extension engaged in the slow and steady process of gently pushing aside a very old and unreadable headstone. I imagined the roots of the tree reaching deep into the ground wrapped about a skull with a mouth full of nutritive dirt and a cracked but toothy grin. Though I had barely thought of John Lennon when we wandered past Strawberry Fields I suddenly remembered hearing that he had been cremated. This might not be true (and I don’t care if it is or if it isn’t) but as I stood there I began to feel a sadness for him and for anyone else whose body’s energy had not been given back to the earth. And then the unmarked grave and what it implied of the body beneath it made me smile - oak food and shelter for singing robin it having become.
I strolled on out of the shelter of the cemetery and found myself singing a line from “Strawberry Fields” that I had never really gotten. “Always no sometimes think its me, but you know I know when it’s a dream, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. That is I think I disagree”. Other than the title the song and that line probably have little to do with Central Park, death or green space but there’s something about it I know I like even though in general I’m not a Beatles or John Lennon fan.
And I don’t like New York much either but whatever Central Park might be with its altered ecosystem and concrete frame I liked it too.