East River. Pier 6. Vintage wooden schooner that’s circumnavigated the globe twice.
I lazed at a waterside table just south of Pier 5, gazing across the water separating my Brooklyn home of many decades from my birthplace in Manhattan. Toying with a trick from decades ago, I squinted: The sunlight sparkling across the water still stretched out into what I’d always fancied were the triangular sails of teeny boats frolicking amidst the waves.
Closer by, a hotly contested soccer game threatened my dreamy reverie of all the people I’d shared squint-induced toy sailboats with in the course of my life. The winning soccer team apparently took a dim view of the losing team’s evening the score with the simple expedient of throwing the winning team’s goal into the East River.
But I was enchanted by the sky. There the tip tops of the vintage schooner’s masts at Pier 6 didn’t just sway back and forth but danced an elaborate dance that surpassed by far the most complicated choreography mere people could think up. Rhythmically, over and over again: a slow/deep side to side, then abruptly a dizzying backwards circle that doubled back on itself followed by a stomach-twisting jump forward.
The soccer competition was now escalating like a runaway train. I expected, at any moment, the arrival of homicide detectives. Hypnotized, I headed for that vintage wooden schooner.
