October 22, 2022 - “The October Sun”

I kept losing the little yellow ball in the sun then trying to track it into my racquet. The idea was to keep the rally going and the sun was everywhere. For hours we hit tennis balls back and forth above a mini-net, and a few feet over, twenty to twenty-five men were skating onto and off of, then onto, then off of, then onto, a street hockey court: small goals and blades. They weren’t playing music, but their fans showed up en masse, creating a jubilance that felt like a compressed version of what you might witness at Madison Square Garden when the Rangers are skating around the ice, and up by two in the third. Were they keeping score? I couldn’t tell. I was hitting tennis balls and wasn’t watching the hockey on the other side of the gate, but more so feeling its rhythm and tuning into my own goal: to hit every shot just right ––– okay, not quite that one, but the next one: just right. Maybe you’ve been there before: moments where the noise and atmosphere around you actually make it easier to concentrate. That was what west 49th Street felt like: the October sun, and autumn in a city that’s finally starting to feel like its old self, all over again.