Thursday, 05 August 2004 | Being the boom box

When we walked out of the movie around ten, we came across several guys break dancing in Union Square. They stood side-by-side facing the same direction, each taking his turn in the empty space in front of him, between the line he'd stepped out of and the people who'd gathered to watch.

They twisted their bodies into impossible and enviable positions, making it look somehow feasible for humans to balance on the top of their heads and spin on concrete like wind-up toys. I always wish I felt more connected to the performance, and perhaps to the break dancers themselves. I don't particularly like feeling like a flat, gawking spectator. Perhaps I would need to be the pavement underneath them, or the boom box.

I'd seen that group before, or at least a few of them. One of the guys is quite chubby, and has the signature move of flashing his stomach by rapidly lifting up his shirt and rolling his belly like a centipede.

Even though I have no plans to leave New York anytime soon, lately I've been looking at it sentimentally, as if it were my last month here, as if the time had come to catalog every corner and every smell—the terrible smell of a handful of incense all being burned at once, of sweet roasted nuts, rotting trash, and freshly baked pretzels. I've also been trying to absorb abstract things like multiculturalism and lifestyle, futilely attempting to file them away for later. I've been trying to memorize Now. I'm not sure why.