August is a month of nothing. New York empties out of rich people and fills up with tourists; no one knows how to use the subway, how to walk on the sidewalk. It feels like a ghost town offering tours, two-story buses pointing out where people I used to love used to live. Summer is still here but has lost all its novelty. The heat feels permanent, the wet dog-sweat air the only air possible. We run the air conditioner absurdly cold until it makes little clouds. Everything is a relief of entrances and exits. Probably how to know when something is ending is just when it feels like it’s going to stay forever. All the high school kids are home from summer camp and bored, clogging up the street at the entrances to the huge gracious buildings uptown, sitting in lazy circles in the park together. Everywhere the air smells like food and a disappointed gaggle of kids is going to a museum. Exhausted parents and bright-eyed out-of-town teenagers stand on street corners reading maps. The subway sweats and grinds to a halt and I expect the colors of the train letters to run like paint through the stations.
school
school
school
August is a month of nothing. New York empties out of rich people and fills up with tourists; no one knows how to use the subway, how to walk on the sidewalk. It feels like a ghost town offering tours, two-story buses pointing out where people I used to love used to live. Summer is still here but has lost all its novelty. The heat feels permanent, the wet dog-sweat air the only air possible. We run the air conditioner absurdly cold until it makes little clouds. Everything is a relief of entrances and exits. Probably how to know when something is ending is just when it feels like it’s going to stay forever. All the high school kids are home from summer camp and bored, clogging up the street at the entrances to the huge gracious buildings uptown, sitting in lazy circles in the park together. Everywhere the air smells like food and a disappointed gaggle of kids is going to a museum. Exhausted parents and bright-eyed out-of-town teenagers stand on street corners reading maps. The subway sweats and grinds to a halt and I expect the colors of the train letters to run like paint through the stations.