my walk home.

       I've been busy at work over the past few days.  At least busier than I've been for awhile.  Or at least I've made more of an effort than in awhile to busy myself with the work that I have. Whenever I get busy, I start to lose some regular perspective.  It comes with siting in my head in front of a computer all day without moving around too much.  Lots of brain activity, lots of eye activity, but very little body activity to balance. So when I actually leave in the night, my rolling through the rotating doors and bursting onto the street is a revelation.   
     No matter how many days I go through this, I have the same reaction and almost always let out a loud "Fuck Yeah" when I feel the air hit my face and brain.  My mind reinvigorates, and the pressurized swelling decreases. And I walk. I can take a cab, and do on occasion, but a great pleasure of living only 34 blocks from the office is that I can hoof it home in under 40 minutes.
    Along the way I cruise through the neighborhoods and note the shifts.  The Japanese take-over territory of the East 50s trend with the after-work suits and partying upper eastsiders into the upper 40s with the steak house obese out-of-towners on business and the stragglers heading out to the trains at Grand Central. There's some desolation between Third and Lex around 39th to 44th in the blown out streets littered with corporate salad containers and torn bags. An Irish bar on Third which stinks of stale smoke, pouring off the always ruddy patrons out on the sidewalk.  Random pizza shops that never appear open or are otherwise unnoticeable during the day, suddenly become prominent attractions. I keep going. 
   
The later the night the better, usually.  Slight whiffs of danger edge through the territory around the mid-40s and farther down.  More unpredictable characters weave around, many times others in 2s or 3s try to catch the random eye as they swagger past, and mouth off hoping to get some attention.  I like my swiftness on those nights.  My hardened tight pace. All the knowledge that's been embedded within me from  the ragged sharp streets of the Mission and Tenderloin in SF to Five Points in Denver from sordid nights, all the deep drenched in my gut, my fear my muscles and flickering eyes, my stripped down bareness. All that finally breathes and seeps out. I taste it lovely and twitching in my saliva and nostrils.  My law firm veneer melts off and I feel myself again. 
      The crowds swell and the mixtures shift depending on the night. Farther down on Third, the bars break open and Murray Hill Kings and their Princesses leak out all over the street in  phantasmagorical mating rituals.  There's empty energy here and it follows me all the way home if I stay on that strip. On Lex, my alternate route - I usually clamber up the hill on 38th to drop in just past the edge of midtown business - sites are darker and more shambling. The hill opens down and broadens around 34th where leftover Murray HIll stumbles by, but then everything narrows heading into the Indian/Pakistani district. For a certain stretch, I can't imagine that I'm just off Park Ave.  he area is independent of its surroundings and there is an old urban ethos adhered to which rarely exists in the city anymore.  More homeless and drunks congregate here. I think about moving here.  The air sucks on the ground and I expect Phillip Marlowe himself to show up around a corner, cigarette glowing in the rain and hat slightly skewed. 
     Baruch college breaks the illusion. Even when there are no students around, the density of jus a few blocks above is lost. But a few blocks later, a separate, less dense but old heaviness picks up across 22nd street.  The lights dim on the approach to Gramercy Park.  Small crowds linger outside the subdued euro-decadence of the Gramercy Park Hotel.  Always luscious lip-smack reds, and shapely black fabrics on stilted heels  out front.  Smoke pouring out and dissipating into the night.  Little else feels like the constant creation of the veritable  New York myth.
     Then I'm about home.  Readjust around Gram Park. suck in the decaying leaves or starstruck blossoms, the uncut greens or dry bark. Around the corners I side-step the inevitable tiny white dogs pissing, constantly pissing all over the sidewalks that define the boundaries of the exclusive caged and carved nature.  Past the Players Club and Arts Club and the sometimes crowds in for another event that no one else ever seems to know about. And then home. Reconfigured.