The carpet of fallen leaves on the ground are thick, and the sound of playful feet kicking some other pile of leaves can be heard in the distance. The sun is nearly setting and the park becomes even more quiet. The honking from the street nearby seems to be subsiding, though we are in the city that doesn't sleep. But this part sleeps a little earlier than most places.
But who's talking about sleep? It's still day time. But in this particular piece of the park there is hardly anyone walking by. The long shadows of the trees and shrubs draw on us like longing arms of a lover rejecting the inevitable farewell. The slight, cold wind reminds us with the last golden and red leaves fallen, autumn is passing its prime. Soon all the trees will be bare and a sense of starkness draws our minds to a more introspective mode.
But who's talking about introspection? It's still autumn, it's still not time for sweaters, though my jacket keeps me warm. But it is quiet here. Then again, I am not thinking about the quiet. I am thinking about the woman who has just sat at the other end of the park bench. She didn't sit in the bench down there, but I suppose her reasons for sitting in "my" bench are plenty. And if I don't ask her, or even talk to her, all those reasons will forever remain unknown, cloaked in the superficiality of my suppositions and surmises. I have been reading a book this cool afternoon, a book about meditation, someone's experience meditating in a cave in a faraway land to find herself. Just as she started to talk about her experience connecting to her God, the moment when silence reigns in her heart as the path is opened up to her, my silence is broken, internally as well as externally, by the arrival of this woman.
She has has sandy blond hair, her face pale with a tinge of gold from the slowly setting sun. I can't tell what color her eyes are because I am not staring at her, but in my mind, which likes to fill in the blanks, she has blue eyes with a hint of green. I've always been wrong about women's eye colors, but I always let my mind fill in the blanks because I rarely get to stare into the eyes of a stranger. She is wearing a dark red, like crimson, jacket and around her neck wraps a silk scarf of some pattern. I am able to discern these details because she isn't looking at my way. She has rested her left cheek on her arms that are wrapped around her knees as she had placed both her bent legs on the bench too. She is looking probably into the distance, where the dirt path in front of us bends. The trees that line the the path and bend with it suddenly seem to come alive, watching her watching them, and watching me observing her without her permission. I can see her right hand from this side. There are two rings on the index finger, silver, Gothic patterns, with red gems, real or fake, studded in meticulously thought out areas. The only other exposed flesh is a bit of her left lower leg where the sock ends before the sleeve of her jeans resume covering of her existence. There's a small tattoo there; I can't tell what it is, but it's of an interesting shape, perhaps a flower, or a medallion. Or a symbol. If I have to bet, I would bet she doesn't have any tattoo on her other ankle.
I close my book with some noise so that she wouldn't get startled by my voice. I've decided to get to know this stranger. She gets to be a part, however minuscule in the context of my long life. My heart begins to throb, making me question for a split second the motive of my desire to interact with this woman. I didn't really get to see her face well. In my mind she must be at least somewhat beautiful. But also in mind there is a readiness to be disappointed. And finally, at another layer in my mind, there is a questioner wondering why all this is important if all I want is to connect with a stranger for a few seconds. While all these layers grow louder in their debate, I said, "There are still very beautiful leaves on the trees" when I see her look up to inspect the tree in front of her, giving me the opportunity to ask this relevant question.
She doesn't seem startled. She slowly turns around and as she does so she says, "I've been noticing them the whole time, the whole autumn, in different parks." Finally I see her face. There's something special about it. She is indeed beautiful, but not in the way my mind had presupposed. I see something warm in her eyes, something welcoming, inviting, and that allows me to put my guard down, guard, or walls, that I didn't know I have put up just by talking to her, maybe even before that. I am a little puzzled and ask, "You've been noticing trees in different parks here?"
"Yes. This is the first time I am in this part of Central Park, but somehow the trees all change the same way regardless of what parks you're in. Though some parks have more of certain kinds of trees than others," she says, smiling.
Before I know what to say next, she adds, "I am glad someone is here. I've been walking the whole day, so I've been to very busy streets, then a street with not a single person on it, and when I walked into this park I suddenly wanted to be in a place that is quiet, but not by myself."
She looks at me with eyes that wonders if I understand what she means, because there's apparently more to her meaning than the words themselves.
"Have you spoken to anyone in your walk?" I ask.
Her eye smiles because she realizes I've understood. She says, "No. I would have liked to at least talk to someone while buying my lunch, but somehow, what crossed my path was an eatery that had an automated food checkout. So I bought my takeout sushi from a machine."
I guess she had the choice to buy something different from a place with a human being, as is the case for almost all eateries in this city. But she didn't.
There is a moment of silence, but gears are turning and thoughts are being processed. I can feel it. Then she says, now turned fully towards me, "When I saw you I realized I had to sit here, wait for you to say something."
I am puzzled. My frown betrays me. She smiles at my inadvertent response, "You probably didn't notice me."
My facial expression must have changed, for she smiles a little more. She continues, "It has never happened to me before. I have been walking for more than a year now. Everyday, I walk a different path in the city. I never see the same building except my work or my house where I start and end my walk, and I always notice different things on perhaps even the same buildings. Every moment of my walk is a new experience. I see different people I never talk to, not because I don't like people, but because they are part of my walk the same way buildings and buses and dogs on leashes are. They are stories of my walk, every face, every smile, every angry look, every stressed frown.
"And today I saw you, running down the subway stairs of the A train station on Canal. Your look, like so many I've seen today and every day of the past fifteen months. But then," she says, mixing her smile with a bit of a frown too, "You are the first person I get to intersect the path again in one day."
Her voice is soft so that I feel like I am her only audience and no one can hear her soliloquy. There is a slight accent, but I can't tell if it's foreign or just from one of the New York boroughs, or just a tourist from another state far away. She sits still at the other end of the bench while I am sitting at this end, and the distance between us is the maximum possible, and that's safe. I wonder if she will tell me more or she is going to stand up and leave now. I wonder why she walks every day. Does she not have a job? Then I wonder what I was doing today. "I was going to see an old friend, who is in the hospital now. We haven't spoken to each other after .... Well, we had a fallen out a while back and we never reconnected. Not until today when I found out that she was in the hospital. She's diagnosed with some rare cancer. I can't remember; rare cancers always have some strange Latin name. I was taking the afternoon off, so I was running there."
Should I tell her what happened in the hospital? What my ex-friend's reaction was upon seeing me? Why I am here in the park, all alone, reading a book about meditation? Why do I want to tell her?
She looks at me, her smile grows a little more. Her eyes concentrate on me for a little bit, then sink into some thought, then return their gaze at me. Her nose is small and now a little red from the evening chill. There's some white strands of hair above her right ear that match very well with the sagacity revealed by the few lines at the corner of her eyes. She has been walking long before whatever happened fifteen months ago, perhaps not with her feet, but with her heart and mind.
"My name is Maggie," she said. She is Maggie from Green Point, Brooklyn.
