I walk briskly to the east, dressed in black hoodie and
sweat pants, as it is 50 degrees as I enter Central Park and see the mostly
blue sky with wispy cirrus clouds above the sparkling reservoir. To the east
there are now three behemoths reflected in the water as Mount Sinai’s new
building is complete. Lush green glorifies the park, and on the carriage path
below me I see bushes of deep pink flower clusters as I turn to the north. The
wind picks up and I am distracted by a man walking ahead of me, carrying his
shoes.
As I walk beside him, I say, “It’s great that they keep this
gravel path smooth enough to walk barefoot.”
“The small stones are good,” the white-haired Asian man
replies with a smile.” In Chinese, we say it helps the balance, the yin and yang.”
And so begins a conversation that takes us around the circumference of the
lake. We are the same age making similar efforts to remain vibrant and healthy,
by eating no meat, yet eating an egg daily and fish; by walking, maintaining a
pulse rate of 120 beats per minute which permits us to have a normal
conversation as we walk and by exercising our muscles and our brains.
I discover he lived for ten years in Europe, in Germany,
Austria and Slovenia, but in my current mood, I don’t want to know more about
his life so I exit after my first round is finished and we each go our separate
way.
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