Morningside Park
Dear Diary:
My dog Cracker knows what time his midday walk is supposed to be. If I am too involved in my work, he first sits at my side and then whines. Eventually, he stands and pats me on the arm until I surrender.
One day last December, we were unusually late leaving for Morningside Park. When we got there, we had missed our window, and Cracker had no dogs to frolic with.
Feeling guilty, I took a longer path home to make it up to him. We had just passed the stairs leading up toward Columbia University when we came to a standstill. Cracker had tangled his leash around my legs.
As I unspooled it, I saw a buzzard on a dead tree branch no more than 20 feet away. The bird’s plumage matched the color of the tree so well that I thought it was a plastic decoy. But I could also see its feathers curling in the wind. It stared straight back at us. Cracker would not stop circling me.
A young man approached, speaking loudly on his phone. Our eyes met. I gestured for him to hush, then pointed at the buzzard. He began to take pictures.
Then Cracker spotted a woman with a dachshund. Within seconds, his leash and the dachshund’s were enmeshed. Within minutes, the group grew to 10 people, many with dogs we had never met before.
The buzzard never flinched.
— Frederic Colier
On the Way to the Met
Dear Diary:
The stones hold a sadness all their own. Winter cold, pale sun.
What do they make of us? Walking, walking, driving past one another.
Like second hands on clocks whose faces we cannot see.
Turning ourselves, one circle into the next until at some point we don’t.
It’s wild, isn’t it — not knowing exactly where we’ll run out of
whatever it is that kept us going. Through snow, beyond morning.
Past the stone facades, all those buildings we never entered.
— Linda Opyr
Pass It On
Dear Diary:
As a comparative literature major at the University of Iowa in the early 2000s, I bought a copy of Don DeLillo’s “Mao II” to read for pleasure.
I never got around to reading it at the time, so the book returned to Brooklyn with me after graduation. It followed me through several moves in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Finally, leaving Park Slope for Midwood, I decided I was never going to read it, so I put it out on the sidewalk in front of the house where I lived at the time. It was snatched up within hours.
A couple of years ago my family and I moved to a New Jersey town with a lot of other Brooklyn transplants. Walking home from the train one night, I passed a free library box and saw a copy of “Mao II.”
I grabbed it, thinking I would finally have time to read it during my daily commute.
As I flipped through the pages that evening, a bookmark dropped to the floor: a ticket receipt for a performance at the University of Iowa — with my name on it.
— Graham W. Goetz
Tea and Empathy
Dear Diary:
It was a cold, dreary winter afternoon. I was at a coffee shop near Lincoln Center, sitting next to a young woman who was studying something on her phone.
I opened my computer. My tea and apple turnover arrived.
“How can it be only 250 calories?” I said, savoring a bite. “It’s delicious.”
“I just got fired,” the woman next to me said.
“Oh,” I said. “There’s something better for you.”
“I teach piano part time,” she said. “I need something else — an office job.”
“I get it,” I said.
“I had a sugar daddy,” she said.
“You don’t need a sugar daddy,” I replied. “Look at you. You’re young and intelligent and beautiful. You’re a goddess!”
“I want you to have true love,” I added, only vaguely aware I was talking with a stranger.
“I think I fell in love with him,” she said. “But he was here one day and gone the next. He knew I was working, not taking advantage.”
I tried to digest what she was telling me.
“You’re a goddess,” she said. “You’re a reflection.”
“We’re goddesses who need work,” I remarked.
“I already found some other things,” she said.
She began to put on her coat.
“Give me your card,” I said.
“Give me yours,” she replied.
Back at home, I listened to her play the piano online. It was pure, a window into her heart.
Weeks later, I saw her again at the same coffee shop. This time, she was working there as a barista.
“I’m going to be touring in Europe for two weeks,” she volunteered. Nodding toward 65th Street, she added: “Then I’ll have a concert here.”
“Wow,” I said. “I look forward to it!”
— Alice Hogan
That’s One Approach
Dear Diary:
I spotted a bright pink, handwritten sign on 47th Street off Ninth Avenue in Manhattan that I keep thinking about.
Taped to a tree, it said: “Please curve your dog.”
— Elena Brunn
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Illustrations by Agnes Lee
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