On Saturday I got it into my head to go to Coney Island, as I'd never been before and I don't care for roller coasters, so it didn't matter that everything was closed and it looked the tiniest bit haunted. The F train goes straight there, so I printed out psychopathology lecture notes to read along the way, then held them in my lap not reading them and instead looked out the window, once the train surged above ground, to things like the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which seemed vast and otherworldly.
At Coney Island I followed the boardwalk all the way around, rode a bus back up Mermaid Avenue, thought of Woody Guthrie, ate a hamburger, and finished out the bit of boardwalk I missed the first time. Over the boards drifted (at first, somewhat surprisingly: a loud, animated oral history of the feud between TuPac and Notorious B.I.G. that was being delivered in motion, 10 feet away, at my same pace, in my same direction, from one music lover to another. I eventually outstepped this hip hop historian and his student and was eventually able to hear): soft Russian voices, a barking dog in the distance, the wheels of a pushcart, the sound of the sea. Of note, I did not brush against anyone or even come within striking distance of another human soul on the boardwalk. Also, the air smelled fresh. So it was a nice outing and a nice change of pace but I did slide into something of a metaphysical brood, returning home not reenergized and task-oriented as I'd hoped but instead feeling terribly alone and sad.
