Tonight I went out to a local event. I finished my book on luck, and she made a good point about “increasing the surface area of your luck”, which was a phrase I liked. For me, it means getting out more.
So, through some combination of my inattention and poor communication on the part of the event sponsors, I went the wrong place. It was raining. I was annoyed for a minute, then I thought to myself, look around. I knew where the right place was, so I just redirected myself.
And I watched all the people running around in the rain, with a wide variety of umbrellas. And I thought: the city in the rain has a texture, a feeling tone.
And it took me back to what I believe is my favorite memory of my trip to New York with my kids: getting caught in the rain in Harlem. I was trying to get to Columbia University, but the line I picked was too far east, so we wound up in the middle of Harlem. Now, we were pretty much the only white faces around, but I’ve been around the block a time or two, and looking around, I didn’t see anything or anyone that concerned me. Just a bunch of ordinary folks trying to get from here to there.
So I decided to walk the ten blocks west, or whatever it is. Two blocks in, a torrential downpour hit, and we sheltered under a big wood construction awning of some sort with maybe 20 other people. We just leaned against the wall, waited, and people watched. And it was a lot of fun. Again, we were the only white faces for a long time, until eventually some more appeared, but I wasn’t anxious because, again, I know what to look for.
[Side note: growing up white, as I did, the consensus everywhere was that Harlem was where you went if you wanted to get shot. And in the 1970’s, that wasn’t too far off the truth, I don’t think]
Some white people scare me, most don’t. Some black people scare me, most don’t. Etc.
Anyway, we waited a while until it let up a bit, then set off again. I bought us some cheap umbrellas. Then it started pouring again, and I thought hell we are already soaked, let’s just keep rolling. Eventually we got to the stairs up to Morningside Heights. There was a river rolling down those stairs. I said to the kids, that looks like fun, but first let me take your picture standing in it, which I did. They thought I was crazy, but that was my screen saver on my phone for many years. I still love that picture. They liked it too, and admitted later they had fun.
Different is often good. You just never know where the best moments of your life will come from.
So anyway, I got to the right place, and the ticket lady gave me a free ticket. Then the mayor (and his presumably armed bodyguard) walked in. I had never seen him up close. Like most people you see on TV, he was much shorter in person. I’ve met a number of celebrities, and that is a common theme. If you’re not the Rock or Arnold, you are probably 5’7″ if you are a man.
And the introductions, the we would like to thank, and thank, etc. had not even finished. It all worked out.
There are patterns in life, there are rollers like they have in airports, where you move with no effort, that only appear when you let go and allow things to flow as they were flowing anyway, but without you seeing it. That sentence almost but does not belong somewhere in Finnegan’s Wake. (did you know quarks were named after a line in that book?).
Ramble end/