I took a walk today

I took a walk today. As I do every workday, at 6:00 AM, four blocks from
my apartment to my office. This is like walking in brackish water; the
late-night party people are straggling home while the early birds are
walking their dogs or jogging to the gym. I feel my feet on the hard
concrete and drop my breath. I start the day by attempting to be as
present as I can as this moment will inform the rest of my day. My
game with myself is to notice several new things on each walk: an
unnoticed piece of architecture, a crack in the sidewalk or an unfamiliar
dog. The color of the flowers in front of the deli was particularly bright in
the cloudy twilight. The smell of bacon in front of the diner was particularly
pungent, hanging in the humidity of the early morning.

The same walk for over a decade and something new every day. Yet the
witness, this old friend who watches through my eyes and smells through
my nose, who lives within and beyond this single human specimen, is strangely
the same. What if I had died last night and I am in a bardo state, my spirit walking
out of my apartment out of habit? I chuckle, feel my feet and drop my breath. I
take solace in the fact that in the river of life this city street carries, my awareness
of this witness is all I have. Thirty three years walking these New York City streets,
the teenage boy and the middle aged man, walking step in step.