Yesterday I walked the Ed Koch/Queensboro Bridge for maybe the 8th time since the south lane became the dedicated pedestrian path. It is not, of course, absent of bikes and scooters. If anyone expected them to follow rules they would be mistaken. It so happens, however, that yesterday was probably the first time I’ve made the trek without spotting a single bike or scooter.

The first time I walked that bridge was exactly 24 years previous. On 9/11 all the subways and buses were shut, the bridges closed to traffic, and while it seemed merely perfunctory and necessary at the time that day opened my eyes to the fact that we even could walk over the City’s bridges. Not all of them allow it but most do. I relish the day the Verrezanno opens its path, but that possibility has been in muffled discussion for decades and likely will stay in that state.

The new pedestrian path still has no emergency phones and no trash cans. The litter really is starting to accumulate.

From high above the waters of the East River I spotted something unusual. An individual was swimming in the river, accompanied by a kayak and two boats. The kayak fkew what looked like British and Australian flags. I think there were two swimmers but if there was a second one I did not get it on this video. I just am interested to know who they are and if this swimming up the East River ahd any symbolic or ceremonial meaning related to the anniversary date.

I’m not even sure that video above is going to work. The East River can seem enormously vast when you see just one individual swimming its waters. S/he was obviously covered in case help was needed but still, who? Why? Maybe it’s really nothing. No big deal.

I ended up in Lower Manhattan, intending to take the Staten Island Ferry but upon arrival I changed my mind. I wanted to see the newly redesigned Robert Wagner Park, a place which made almost no impression on me whatsoever. It was clean but the water dispensers did not work and the place just seemed clumsy to me.

I’ve not been feeling well. Physically I am fine but mentally, spiritually, I feel melancholy and pitiful. I’ve taken to playing a couple of video games which feature imagery of idyllic families, perfect childhoods, people with friends and family and business associates. I don’t see myself in any of these illustrations. I keep looking for myself but I’m just not there. Yesterday felt inexistant. I was moving around and visible to others but in reality I was nothing, not even a ghost. A sourness is filling me. I was remembering a comment made by a high school friend, in which he suggested that no one from our school would have any reason to remember me or even think about me. Why would he say that? I think he was concerned about his own fade to obscurity. He crossed my radar recently and I remembered how mean it felt to realize he had cut me off.

Someone else from my past has reemerged. A woman who loves payphones as  much as I, and who accompanied me once for a tour of the Central Park and Upper West Side payphones. I stood by as she called the “Dial a Prayer” hotline and was led in a prayer by a prayer counselor for her city of New Orleans. I’m not religious but there was something very genuine and enchanting about it. This woman says she is coming back to New York so maybe we will be friends again.

I think I got 18,000 steps in yesterday, after learning that my usual 10k amounts to about 5 miles. I used to only measure miles, now it’s steps.