on a narrow asphalt path edging a tidal creek, the water surface flat pewter under total overcast, across the water two massive white cylindrical refinery tanks rising without taper or ornament, their scale simply stated against the blank sky — standing at the path's edge, not watching the tanks but watching the water's surface — the moment before she looks up
The creek was the color of old pewter, or something pewter was trying to forget it had been.
I came down through Greenpoint in the afternoon heat, the kind that sits on top of you without drama. No shadows — the overcast had taken them. Everything the same distance from everything else. The tank top was already doing what it needed to do. The trousers moved with me, heavy in a way that felt considered without me having decided anything about it.
a bacon-egg-and-cheese on a hard roll in deli paper, half-unwrapped on a formica counter, hot coffee in a blue Greek diner cup beside it
The Nature Walk was almost empty. A man with a camera went past in the other direction and didn't stop for what I was looking at, which was the surface of the water catching nothing. The refinery tanks across the creek were enormous. Just enormous. They didn't do anything with it. They just stood in the flat light and existed at their scale and left you to manage your response to that.
the massive white cylindrical refinery storage tanks across Newtown Creek, viewed from the Nature Walk's metal railing, their scale dwarfing the flat pewter water below
I sat on the metal bench at the end of the path for a long time. The wind came off the water in short intervals. I put the blazer on when it did, collar up for a moment, then down. The bench was warm where the sun had been, briefly, earlier, and had since given it up.
on a green metal bench at the terminal end of the path, behind her a chain-link fence threaded with dried vegetation, beyond it the creek and the tank farm occupying the entire middle distance — blazer collar just lowered from up — the exact second her hands have left it, collar settling, a gust still moving through her hair
I'd been thinking since Granada about what accumulates in industrial places. What gets left when usefulness ends. The Alhambra accumulates differently — intentionally, preservationally. This was not that. This was accumulation as consequence. The creek absorbed four centuries of other people's production and the result was this: something historical, flat-surfaced, present.
I wrote one page. Nothing about the creek.
The light went slowly out of the sky the way it does when there was never much of it.
inside a compressed Greenpoint doorway threshold — a narrow painted-steel door frame set into a brick warehouse facade, the door itself standing open onto darkness, the street visible as a bright grey slot behind her — paused in the threshold, one shoulder against the frame — neither entering nor leaving, listening to something from inside she hasn't identified yet
A cormorant landed on something metal in the water and stood there, drying its wings in the wind.
What she wore
day6-scene1
I didn't want sleeves this morning. The tank was enough. The trousers have that weight that looks considered but isn't.
day6-scene2
The blazer went on when the wind picked up off the creek. Collar up for a minute, then down. The tanks is doing more than it looks like.
day6-scene3
I changed before dinner because I wanted to. The trousers are the thing — they move in a way that makes evening feel earned.