Sunday, April 18, 2004
Spring Fever
Spring is bursting out all over NYC. Every tree on every street is exploding with fragrant flowers. Women everywhere seem to have morphed overnight into leggy, brickhouse Goddesses with big designer sunglasses. They also all seem to have taken up exhibitionism. Scanty is the new black.
Not in the Bronx though. Not at my High School. The great, grey, paperbark maples lining the drive lean heavy under day-long rain, stretching towards the park to the north, and still bereft of even the tiniest sprout of new growth. The school’s blonde brick façade remains in mourning, forever draped in the black veil of scaffolding and opaque, black dust netting. Although hammers can sometimes be heard banging in the late afternoon, and dust chokes the windows that must always be kept open to alleviate the stifling heat that pores incessantly off the radiators, it still appears that no progress has been made, nothing has changed beneath the school’s rehabilitative cloak.
Still every 10 minutes the train rattles by, its speeding silver cars emblazoned with a neon-red “8,” taunting with swift passage to the sunshine and flowers of home, of the park, and happy hours, and matinee movies. I’m stuck here in this Bronx High School, and time keeps dragging on.
Spring is bursting out all over NYC. Every tree on every street is exploding with fragrant flowers. Women everywhere seem to have morphed overnight into leggy, brickhouse Goddesses with big designer sunglasses. They also all seem to have taken up exhibitionism. Scanty is the new black.
Not in the Bronx though. Not at my High School. The great, grey, paperbark maples lining the drive lean heavy under day-long rain, stretching towards the park to the north, and still bereft of even the tiniest sprout of new growth. The school’s blonde brick façade remains in mourning, forever draped in the black veil of scaffolding and opaque, black dust netting. Although hammers can sometimes be heard banging in the late afternoon, and dust chokes the windows that must always be kept open to alleviate the stifling heat that pores incessantly off the radiators, it still appears that no progress has been made, nothing has changed beneath the school’s rehabilitative cloak.
Still every 10 minutes the train rattles by, its speeding silver cars emblazoned with a neon-red “8,” taunting with swift passage to the sunshine and flowers of home, of the park, and happy hours, and matinee movies. I’m stuck here in this Bronx High School, and time keeps dragging on.
