It's Tuesday, a beautiful day in NYC. The construction work has ended in the house and it's quiet. I could have worked on music but didn't. Instead, I took Gem to the park. She likes to run in circles on the grass.
It was like a summer day on the East Lawn. Kids were playing soccer. Girls were sunbathing in bikinis. A young woman in a wheelchair was pushed over the uneven ground by her parents. A couple threw a ball for their dog.
Gem and I found a shady spot under a tree. I had a book with me but didn't read it. I lay back and looked up at the sky and the clouds. Above us was the tree, not a maple or an oak, which pretty much exhausts my tree knowledge, but a giant beauty, its massive leaf-covered branches moving in the wind. I looked up at it and tried to settle my mind, to breathe and not think.
I had a strange feeling all day, despite the weather. Like I was not a part of anything but separate. And on such a beautiful day, too. It makes no sense. But I'm used to these episodes of unease. Just last night I proclaimed myself free of it, and it was true last night. It comes and goes. Is it loneliness? Depression? Anxiety? A reaction to getting old? Fear of a changing world? Probably it's a combination of all these things.