A thunderstorm caught me in Washington Square Park on Wednesday and I have not stopped thinking about it.
It was one of those swampy afternoons where the sky is the color of a bruise by 5PM. I'd walked over from the West 4th station, no umbrella, because I am an optimist and a fool. I got as far as the fountain when it opened up.
Not rain. A verdict. Warm, fat drops that soaked through my linen shirt in about four seconds. Everyone scattered toward the arch — the big white one, the one in every movie — and we packed under it, this instant huddle of strangers, laughing at ourselves.
A tourist. Two NYU kids sharing one jacket held over their heads. A dog in a raincoat, unbothered, superior. Me, wringing out my sleeve.
And the saxophonist. There is always a saxophonist in Washington Square Park. He did not stop. He did not run. He stood at the edge of the arch's shelter and played straight into the storm, and the rain on the stone and the sax and the thunder became one single thing.
Somebody started dancing. An old man in a soaked guayabera, eyes shut, just swaying, and it was so gentle and so unbothered that I felt my whole chest loosen.
This is the New York they don't sell you. Not the skyline, not the brunch. The way a thunderstorm in Washington Square Park will force forty strangers into a temporary family under one arch and score it with a saxophone.
I thought of the monsoon back home. The way the whole street runs out when the first rain breaks the heat, kids and aunties and the chai stall guy, everyone tilting their faces up. Same instinct. Different city.
The storm passed in twenty minutes, the way they do. The sun came back like nothing happened. I walked home squelching and grinning.
Some afternoons the city hands you a whole life in twenty minutes.
Love,