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I didn’t feel like going for a walk the other day, but I made myself and I was rewarded. It was Make Music day and even though it wasn’t as active years past, I was lucky to catch a renaissance singing group, and this guy playing piano in Washington Square Park. It was just so nice to see live performances again. And to sit among the human race. (The pianist invited people to lay underneath the piano for the sound, and people took turns trying it out.)

When I got home I listened to what was one of my favorite pieces to play when I had a piano and regularly played (this was WAY back in the 1970s): Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique.

I’m supposed to take a walk this morning, but I’m feel awfully lazy, and it’s just a tad too warm. I don’t know how I’m going to get through this summer. It’s supposed to be a hot one. They’re all going to be hot and even hotter ones from now on, probably. God, I’d love to take a swim instead of walking today. I wrote about swimming briefly in my book about singing. (Except it’s really about death.)

“A few weeks after I’d started swimming again, when it no longer killed me to swim laps, I slid down underneath the water, braced my feet against the side of the pool, then pushed as hard as I could and took off for my next lap. It’s my favorite part. For those first few feet as you surge forward underwater, before you break the surface again, you feel like a rocket taking off into another world, but in slow motion, as the water gently softens what would otherwise have been an explosive burst. In that brief pocket of stretched-out time, as I soared, adagietto, through the bright blue, enveloping water …”

The rest is about death. Some more graffiti from my last walk. I like the skeleton. Big surprise, right?

Seen on my walk yesterday. This looks like a father/daughter project, which made it even sweeter.

Over the years I’ve watched store after store close in my neighborhood, as the rents kept going up. When everything closed down for the pandemic I worried about who would never reopen again. The thing is, I only cared about a couple of places and one of them is … I don’t know how to describe it, it’s kinda like a five and dime. But it’s been in the neighborhood for thirty years and I use them to buy this and that, Christmas lights, cards, office supplies. It’s called Golden Rabbit. I see that they categorize themselves as a stationary store, and yes, that makes sense.

I saw them reopen and I was happy, but today they put up going out of business signs. Their landlord was bugging them about the rent for the months they were shutdown, I read online. But when someone opened a GoFundMe campaign for them they said it was just too expensive to operate. I was all set to call Cuomo’s office to do something about it, then I thought maybe this is what they want to do.

I stopped by and asked them. “Is there anything you can do?” He shook his head. “Do you want to do anything?” Again he shook his head. “Are you just done?” And he made this gesture that I can only describe as he’s had enough.

I just feel so enormously sad. It’s not like I can’t find these things elsewhere, but these two people are the nicest people, they’ve always been there, the selection is fun and eclectic. It’s one of the last mom and pop stores in the neighborhood. Of course it will be replaced by something I don’t need and can’t afford. Goodbye Golden Rabbit. You will be greatly missed.

But people are starting to act as if it is. Runners are still not wearing masks for the most part. I loved this sign. It alternates between a message reminding people to wears masks and this: