There's a pianist who rolls an upright piano into Washington Square Park every Sunday. I don't know his name. I've never tipped him enough. But I've started planning my week around him.
In Ahmedabad, Sundays were for family. Long lunches, afternoon naps, the television playing something nobody was really watching. Sunday was a feeling before it was a day.
Here, Sundays can disappear if you're not careful. There's always one more errand, one more friend to catch up with, one more thing the city insists you should be doing. So I've made a small rule: from 10 to 12, I am at the fountain with an iced coffee and a notebook. No phone. No plans. Just the pianist, the pigeons, and a little girl in a tutu who thinks she owns the park. (She does.)
What I'm learning, slowly, is that the city doesn't owe me stillness. I have to build it myself, one Sunday at a time.
If you see a brown girl in a striped shirt smiling at nothing in particular near the arch, that's me. Say hi. Or don't. The piano is doing the talking anyway.
Love,