On Love At First Sight, in Retrospect:

Here is a funny thing that happened that is not really a story:
Two days ago I met a friend in Union Square park at the benches across from Fuerza Bruta. It was hot, and I was wearing something silly as if in protest of this fact, and we sat side by side and had a nice conversation and at some point she left and I kept sitting. It struck me, killing time on this bench alone, how "people-watching in the park" is one of those things busy people claim to really dig about New York City but it's not something you ever actively plan for. I thought these thoughts and frosted over with that light, sweet, Southern-ladies-in-To-Kill-A-Mockingbird sweat and considered everyone who passed.

And it was strange: this sort of neo-cast-of 'HAIR!' crew came dancing across my path: a guy with a guitar and a guy in a kilt and two other girls, wearing funny accessories, sporting impractical haircuts. They put up a sign by a tree that said 'Flowers or Cigarettes Appreciated!' and then this guy started playing his guitar and singing. The friends orbited him, little moons all over the grass, and filmed this concert with tiny cameras.
It was really beautiful. The kid had a great voice. I caught myself realizing I wasn't directly thinking about anything as I listened to him, and that was nice. I stayed for two songs.

The next day, for strange and unpredictable reasons, I wandered through the exact same stretch of park at the exact same time and ran into the same friend on the same bench. We sat and had a nice conversation, then she had to leave for work. I still had more seconds to fill so I stayed to watch people. No music Thursday -- instead, across from me two friends filmed a third passed out on a bench in a drunken stupor. An old hippie in the corner called the guys out for being mean and then a sort of rumble broke out. At some point, Drunk Guy emerged from his stupor and staggered to his feet, and then the old hippie admitted he was wrong to criticize, said he "was out of line, didn't mean to step to anybody." From the looks of the aftermath everyone became friends, and then the park lights to say EVENING! turned on all around me.

And as I was about to leave, I "met" someone. I use quotations because I never meet people from the ether, and neither do you, probably: any stranger who sort of rolls up on your personal space in a public park is rarely to become Someone. But THIS person was funny and odd and languid, and we talked about the scene in front of us and then managed to cram a surprising amount of personal information into eight minutes of not-knowing-the-others'-name. But another thing written in my planner pulled me away, and I got up to go to where I had to be.

I have built what I call My Life on pieces of paper. Some of it has been lost over the years, and some of it has never been printed out, some is crumpled and some is fading with age. In My Life, I think about the probability of these two unrelated Park Days, and I think about my sad, scrawled phone number swirling around somewhere in outer space undialed, uninterested in forevers, likely. My planner: many pieces of paper, many lists, many ideas, many obligations and things to look forward to, weeksdayshours broken into digest-able chunks. And some remarkable, unplanned, un-lamentable events (but were they EVENTS, really?) slipped between meetings in black ink. And I think now, isn't that funny? Weren't you so so worried about the things you'd never understand fully and weren't interested in, the books you won't read before you die, the way your ass looks fat in a certain dress and the strange ribbons of backward logic that encase your latest stab at something like love? Weren't you so so convinced that you owned the universe the last time you smoked marijuana and saw the city skyline from a friend's room, from a train window, didn't you think you had it all figured out and there was nothing left anywhere on the planet, no thing that could change what you considered a charted course? Oh boy, oh girl, you were wrong. Not every airport is the same, you see. People aren't similar, not at all. You're not afraid, you're just a kid.