Commuting: A Detour Into A Season

 

Interesting, what detours on a morning bicycle commute (yes, I'm doing that again: more about that later) will bring into view.

First, in an industrial area of Long Island City just south of Silvercup Studios, I had to detour for this:

 

OK, I'd seen it before.  But if you're pedaling down 22nd Street and pass under the overpasses for the Queensborough (59th Street) Bridge and the #7 train of the MTA, turn right and then left,  you'll run into something that disrupted the street grid: 

Some time in the past, I started a search I just may resume.  Specifically, I was (and am) curious as to whether that rock outcropping was left in place because it was too hard to break or blast  (there are a few similar outcroppings in Upper Manhattan for that reason)--or, perhaps too expensive.  Or, for all I know, someone or some group of people didn't want it destroyed.  Could it have been sacred to people who no longer live in the neighborhood?

The other morning brought a crisp, cool breeze and a blaze of color some living beings--I include myself, sometimes--hold as a store, a memory, against the season that inevitably follows.

Whenever I see a leaf or a flower, I see a hand.  Sometimes it is trying to capture water, light--or to hold whatever time it may have left.  I couldn't help but to wonder whether those leaves I saw not far from the rock were trying to hold onto their beauty in that moment--or whether they were bleeding away, however slowly, those last flickerings of the light they still hold.

I know that since I've returned to the classroom, my experiences, and those of my students, are different--whether in obvious or not-so-obvious ways--from what they, and I, experienced before the pandemic.  I wonder whether it has anything to do with bicycle commutes like the one I did the other morning.