I Live in New York

I woke early this morning and witnessed something that I normally take for granted. At 6:30 this am, I sat in the front window of a bagel shop and watched a giant stand up and start walking. I had a black cup of coffee, a blueberry muffin, and a copy of the Times so fresh it was dripping ink.

When I walked into the shop this morning the streets were dead, only a few people mulling around to the sounds of a new day breaking. As I sat and read, slowly, store signs turned on, doors opened, cabs honked, and the street began to fill. The grey haired man across the street came out of his apartment door with a small black dog on a short blue leash, he turns to his right walking in front of a of still closed grocery store and turns the corner. I take my first bite of my muffin and sip the still-too-hot coffee while I flip through the front section of the Times. The front page has stories of Rumsfield, bird flu and exxon mobile, while the sports section viscously heckles the dismal Knicks. The guys at the bodega next door use a green garden hose to wash off the already heating pavement while a cab driver tosses a piece of a leftover sandwhich at a group of pigeons. I take another sip as an older lady walks up to the counter ordering as she walks, a green tee and “a plain bagel, dry… with nothing on it.”

None of these events are out of the ordinary but, in just over 30 minutes, the sleeping giant stood up and started to lightly jog. The city was now fiesty and full of energy. I finished the muffin and took the remaining sip from the now luke warm coffee and snuck out the side door. As I walked home it must have appeared as if I were standing still, as I dragged my flipflops slowly across the bodega’s wet pavement ... realizing what I had just seen.