Friday Afternoon in the Universe

Wow. I mean, I wander out of the Carnegie Library, having wasted a few hours in the Pennsylvania Room researching an essay that’s going nowhere, feeling sorry for myself, pissed off and ready, for the ten-thousandth time, to give up writing altogether.

So I come down the marble stairs, trying not to look at anyone, keeping my eyes on the floor as I sulk toward the exit. I hear footsteps behind me, but they’re far enough behind that I push through the door without looking up to hold it for anyone. Another set of stairs now: cement, broad and awkwardly-distanced so that you can’t simply put one foot in front of the other, you know, one on each step—instead it becomes an embarrassing game of one foot on one step, then two together on the next step, then deciding which foot should move forward next…should you alternate? Or does it not matter since you’re returning to baseline every other step anyway?

It’s too much to think about. To hell with this essay. To hell with this winter. To hell with these stairs that lead to sidewalks that lead to Schenley Plaza.

And then I feel it. Not quite spring, but better than winter. Warmth.

I stumble into the plaza, avoiding my usual spot under the tent, trying to get into the spirit of new perspectives brought on by the uptick in temperature. I try (and, triumphantly, fail) to sight a cloud in the thawing sky. I feel, in taking my scarf off, almost indecent. Scandalous even.

But then I crumble as I always do on the first warm day, overwhelmed by thoughts of what I should be doing for maximum enjoyment and advantage-taking of the weather. It’s a kind of paralysis: I start one thing and think about another, about how that other thing would surely be better than what I’m doing now, and then I go do it and the cycle repeats.

And I almost feel ashamed, sitting here and writing, ready to explode, feeling that I should be doing something. I try to remember that I am. I am doing something. I’m here, writing, feeling hopeful in a very general way on a Friday afternoon.

This notebook, this assignment…today, they’re anchors. Today they force me to sit outside and just be; to sit here and soak it in.

Everything feels new.

New attitude. New seat (a warm green park bench I’ve had my eye on all winter, covered in ice heretofore). New weekend. New list of submissions logged in Submittable. New movement in other, less infuriating essays. New tone of voice in the passing conversations (jubilance—the verbal equivalent of skipping). New sun on my neck.

The patches of snow that remain are pathetic, defeated, dirty and cowering.

I put on one of my favorite jazz albums, Medeski Martin and Wood’s Friday Afternoon in the Universe, and let it loop in my headphones. The music’s great, but sitting here watching the sudden buzz of people leaving work, high-fiving one another as they shuffle around this greening, roped-off lawn, I realize what I like most about the album is its title—the ability of a phrase to conjure the limitless energy and hope that everyone in the plaza seems to feel today.