1. A little-known fact is that rainy days are the best time to go to the park. Maybe not in a downpour, but a light drizzle is perfect.
2. It’s just you and the plants, the sky a silvery white that lets the colors shine, each rain drop a crystal.
3. The outside world — of politics and violence and mediocre television — seems even more distant and muffled in the rain.
5. May is a particularly good time to go the park in the rain if you want to see thunderclouds of azaleas.
6. If this tree ever dies, the universe will implode into a single molecule of being and nothingness that will explode so that we can start the whole thing over.
7. This time with no commercials, good public transit, a no-growth model of economic development, and more and bigger parks everywhere.
8. There’s a lot of emphasis on money in our culture, which is understandably because it’s relatively objective and fungible, but here in the park — and in the rain, as you pass a flowering azalea — you can delude yourself into thinking that we might come to some sort consensus about what is beautiful and worth preserving.
9. It happened here, so why can’t it happen everywhere?
10. The park is a political theory.
11. The photographs are the evidence for those not yet convinced.
AUTHOR NOTE: Because of rain delays, I am now reading this Wednesday, May 23 at Bruce’s Garden in Inwood. The event starts at 6:30 pm and will be very low-key. I’ve never been to Bruce’s Garden — which is in Isham Park (enter at Park Terrace East) but it looks very beautiful. Hope to see you there 🙂
