179th st / 181st st / convent ave / morningside ave

2.62 miles

these entries are increasingly belated and these walks are increasingly short.. but here i am!

i am grateful for my friend who lives on 139th street and for the chance to see this neighborhood again and again. i like the quiet and the minty green fire escapes and strange roofs. these photos are mostly from above that, however, around 180 (little dominican republic, hudson heights, whatever you’d like to call it, but the streets are very short across), and then also a little of west harlem and bordering morningisde park. the lighthouse itself is a bit off the route, but how could i not include it?

this day feels a bit dreamy now. this little red lighthouse and this ‘walk in the woods’, a respite from the city— or no, a respite from what comes with the city. a breath of wonder (and of chilly air) when it feels like there is little room to breathe.

the sights already slip away from me, but these i do remember: the ‘i love you’ written on the bridge— who wrote it and to whom? to every car that drives beneath it; the palisades, across the river; city college, made of stones; two bridges, flanking the narrow tip of the island; some sort of spiritual amphitheatre; a semi-frozen lake, and a child walking on its edges, precarious; a lone man standing near the lighthouse, then gone; the bright blinding sun as it reflected off the river.

years from now, i’d like to also remember my conversations with the egg lady at the local greenmarket. she somehow knew i was korean under the ear muffs and mask (the eyes give it away), and she told me how she worked in a laundromat owned by a korean man after she went to fashion school. we made talk about the snow, because that is what you do, and she told me how she hoped to build an igloo with her grandchildren the next day. i bought her eggs and i went home and ate one, boiled for six minutes and thirty seconds, with butter and salt.