While the world still struggles with a stubbornly cruel pandemic, there is at last local progress and as NYC claims a seventy percent vaccination rate, our lives are veering back towards what was once normalcy, if there ever was such a thing.
This weekend we did the unthinkable; we stood in line without a mask—even though distancing—and hopped onto a maritime instrument of public transportation, a.k.a. a ferry, along with a plethora of our fellow and so colorfully diverse citi-zens.
Stranded forever into the New York Harbor and banished from all road networks, our destination was Governors Island, a stone’s throw away from both the Brooklyn piers and Lower Manhattan. Much work has been done there and the island is now a very attractive day outing spot, with plenty of green space for picnics, cute historic buildings and houses peppered about impeccable lawns, and exceptional vistas all around.
The weather was humid and rainy, and in a spur of the moment we had left home without even jackets, picnic goodies or a proper camera. But we found ourselves thoroughly enjoying the moment, laughing at the few raindrops that caught us at the top of a small hill, and we breathed deep, and we gazed, and we walked and explored, and we looked at all the people around us, doing just the same.
It was so natural it was a bit unreal, so simple it could have been a dream. But I pinched myself hard and did not jump awake. It was happening. The end of isolation, of smile-less faces, of mental fences made of distance and wipes.
Despite the low clouds and gloomy atmosphere, a light shone both inside of us and on the horizon.
Overhead the albatross
Hangs motionless upon the air
And deep beneath the rolling waves
In labyrinths of coral caves
The echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand
And everything is green and submarineAnd no one showed us to the land
And no one knows the where’s or why’s
But something stirs and something tries
And starts to climb toward the lightPink Floyd – “Echoes”, Meddle