Sunday, April 26, 2009

A VOYEUR IN MCCARRON PARK

Today was one of those sweltering sunbaked days, those intoxicating New York afternoons dreamed up in Fitzgerald novels and old hollywood movies. What everyone thinks of when you say NYC. Its the city the way the city's meant to be. The streets teeming with people, ambling, blinking, soaking up sunlight like lizards caught hibernating a month too long. Hung over and hurting, a hollowness sat like a rock in my stomach, and I knew it wasn't going to be a day for fleamarketing or sipping bloody mary's. No hair of the dog today, Sir. It was a day for soaking in the sun, for soaking in someplace new, so I decided to take a stroll to McCarron Park. An odd choice, considering my distaste for the hipster community, but my cousin had a softball game, and a few hours of quiet seemed in order.

I found a spot on a warm park bench behind home plate, and watched softballs crack across the soft blue sky. A sky turned rose behind the half-tint of my oversized 80's sunglasses. On those hungover, hollow days, there's something comforting about seeing the world in shades of rose. The players were enthusiastic, albeit a little confused, as they both had green jersey's for whatever reason, and I couldn't quite tell who was who. It wasn't long before my focus shifted to the strange tattooed community ambling around me. There's a funny thing about hipsters. They strive so hard to push the boundaries of this banal, normal existence, and that much, I suppose, I can appreciate. It's their mantra to live creatively, differently, in ways that shock or gain attention, and yet, when all assembled in one place like our dear little hamlet of Williamsburg, you find they're all the same. There are the hipsters with headphones, the big buggy-looking 80's throwbacks in a rainbow of colors. There are the hipsters with headbands and the hipsters with nose rings, and the hipsters with their adopted pit bull puppies pulling at their leashes. There are the hipster girls with short-shorts and cowboy boots, some with stars tattooed on their shoulders, some with stars tattooed on their necks. There are the hipsters with skateboards and the hipsters with baby carriages, with their hipster children rocking fauxhawks and skull tshirts. It was a whole hipster paradise out there in McCarron Park; a mirage of happy tattooed skin and over sized nerd glasses writhing around in the heat.

About an hour into the melee, I noticed a tiny, bright-eyed girl with this red wisp of hair, furiously scootering around the park walkway. No older than four or five, she scootered with the intensity of an Olympian, cheeks flushed, freckles blazing, the beginning of a sunburn beginning to sneak across her pale white skin. Around and around, this little girl scootered the circumference of the entire park.
Parentless, fearless, breathless. And with each revolution, she kept getting faster and faster, her eyes burning with this intense rapture. And to me, this little girl was the wildest of all, the one bit of precious purehearted life blazing around the asphalt. She was the gem, man. She was the star of the show. And as the last homerun echoed into the hazy afternoon light, I swore to myself that this little flaming pixie would stay with me longer than any one of the players in the freakshow before me.

-WILLA K