It's alive!

The Washington Square Fountain, that is. How delighted I was to see it still misting a crowd while passing though the park on my way to return some past due library books this week. I hadn't visited since those scorching late-summer days, when I would often trek over on my lunch hour from West Soho and watch kids splashing in the water. (Feeling, in my usual melodramatic manner, an  unsurpassable barrier standing between me and them, with freedom residing within the fountain.) At night after work, a little less constrained by time, I would sometimes sit on a bench nearby or on the edge of the fountain itself, a periodic breeze misting me, listening (again in usual melodramatic manner) to the clear straining of the lonely saxophone. (You can always guarantee some jazz sax or trumpet.) I still regret never jumping in myself.

In any case, I thought it was dry for the season and was surprised to see it still alive in late October, with the silhouette of a trumpet player almost bleeding into a twilight-misty background.

I stood at the side just to take it in before walking back up to Union Square to catch the subway. A couple kissing on the wall,  another both cross-legged and talking intensely, a long-haired little girl in a red T-shirt wading through the waters. Wafts of chlorine-smelling chemical (from the recycled water?) forging a natural association, reminiscent of suburban lawns. The backdrop--doo-wop singers under the arch and an artist drawing a psychedelic flower in fluorescent chalk. Some of the leaves in the area were changing colors, but not many.

The park still reminds me of humid summer nights. I think it will as long as the fountain is still going.