Nighthawks

Sunday of Martin Luther King Day weekend

     Last night, Beau slept through the night in his crate: I slept in the arms of Morpheus.  The five-to-six hours of hard exercise and my refusal to let Beau nap in the evening did the trick.  I "cried to dream" again, if not as Caliban did, describing the magical effects of the airs of the mysterious isle that is his home:

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.

     Notwithstanding, dreaming again restored me; and when the "wake-up" call came at 5:40 a.m., with Beau making snuffling noises from his crate, I could deal with it.  Beau and his mistress walked to 96th Street and back so I could deposit a check at Citibank, my only resort until Citibank reorganizes itself after last week's fire.

     The city was quiet, many people having left town for the first long weekend of the year.  Nonetheless, as I walked along Broadway with Beau, I was surprised to see that even at seven a.m. on a holiday Sunday in deep winter, Starbuck's and the local coffee shops were filled with people working on computers over breakfast.

      What time do you have to get up to make it Starbuck's at seven a.m. on the Sunday of a holiday weekend?  The local coffee shops open at 6:00 a.m., so locals must make it worthwhile for the staff there to get up even earlier.  Watching the assorted types sitting by the windows (the most desirable spots) I was reminded of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, and reflected that the peaceful, if gloomy scene he painted lives on, albeit just when the winter's darkness is giving way to dawn, rather than sometime in the middle of the night.

       Nighthawks has no air of menace, although night in the big city now carries that taint.  In movies  made about the city in the war years, while there may be gangsters and there is crime, it's always organized, not random, as police blotters now read in the main.  Perhaps New York was safer then, I don't know.  My mother always said that at that time she would walk home from a dance after midnight, strolling through Washington Square Park (she lived with her father in a walk-up at 13 Carmine Street, in Greenwich Village), without the slightest fear.   I only have that sensation when I am out in the city at night if it's either well before midnight or after dawn.

       Last night, to tire Beau out, we walked from the apartment on 111th Street and Broadway to 125th Street, turning East and walking to Frederick Douglas Boulevard, now a trendy area with renovated apartment buildings and gleaming bars and restaurants.  The boulevard is unkempt, so Beau had a field day trying to pick up discarded aluminum foil wrappers for food and plastic containers.  At 110th Street we reached Central Park North and the beginning of Central Park West.  We walked down "C.P.W" to 95th Street.  My elementary school lies between that block and Columbus and I always like passing by.

        We walked to Broadway and home.  Beau still had energy to burn, so we went out two more times.  That was what it took to have him sleep through the night until 5:40 a.m.

         What I have realized is that as a hunting dog, Beau could spend five to six hours in the field, chasing game.  I thought three hours would be the norm.  As a result, for the near future, I will be living a virtuous life.  I won't be watching movies in the evenings because I have to keep Beau up until nine or ten at night, walking him continuously so he --and I-- will sleep through the night.

          When I was a young girl, I read Therese of Lisieux's The Story Of A Soul, the autobiography of a nun who died of tuberculosis in her twenties, venerated as a Catholic saint and "Doctor of the Church".  The organization and the rigors of monastic life impressed me, and I wondered whether I might not want to take the veil --for about five minutes.  Yet I still admire those who can cheerfully submit to austerities the rest of us shrink from.  And it is therefore fitting that the next phase of my life with Beau will  be monastic in form, if not nature.  By choice, as having almost given way to despair yesterday, I now realize that a satisfactory accommodation between Beau and me is within my grasp.  And perhaps that will lead me to new discoveries about myself I would not have had but for the challenge he is posing.

          --And even if it doesn't, it will mean I don't have to be a "nighthawk" any more.