Walking east near the 59th Street Bridge, I saw a startling shadow up ahead. A bishop’s crook, twenty feet tall, on the smooth surface of a brick wall painted white. The light pole’s reflection flickered. I fumbled for my camera but before I could pull it out the shadow slipped away along with the sunlight that created it. It was sunset, my short film had vaporized but the beauty of the image was branded inside my brain.
Light always plays tricks on me and I like that. Serious shadow production in early winter’s fleeting light with cold clear air is ideal making movie weather.
This past Saturday morning, walking along the East River Drive inside Carl Schurz Park, then down to 79th Street and East End Avenue, I stopped on the 500 block of 81st Street to savor the rich shadows and light contrasts against the buildings. Leaning into a street tree to shoot up past the branches and fire escapes I thought this is what I saw in 1957 from my stroller when I was 3 and laid all the way back and concentrated on the sky instead of trying to see what was in front of my one year old brother’s big head that was blocking my forward view (I have a fat head too, but it doesn’t impede my view).
Mom was a big time Yorkville walker. Rambling down to 59th Street, “to make sure the bridge was still there,” was nothing for her. Rory and I would dive inside the family car in front of our house on 83rd Street (Dad didn’t have a car, so our stroller was our jalopy) and we’d take off for the foreign lands inside our Yorkville neighborhood: Bohemia, Hungary, Germany, Italy, Ireland, and other exotic places. Aromas and languages floated by our noses and ears on each block. Recalling our ancient adventures, I began taking photos from my old stroller view, same perspective kids see today from their Maclaren carriages if their moms let them get out of their protective coverings for air.
The bishop crook I spied last week might have been a reminder of something I saw long ago that planted itself inside my head and returns, now and then. Not all stored images are happy ones. Complicated shadows run through every childhood. It’s inexplicable having emotions riled up inside you without warning and sometimes without understanding of what put them there in the first place. Triggers are everywhere, and I find that mystery intriguing.
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Thomas’s blog: Yorkville Stoop to Nuts
