Feet pounding on asphalt



I took a long walk to Battery Park today during my lunch (half) hour. Just walked on and on, past the delis and the newspaper stands and The Bull. I lost myself among the tourists, with their sun visors and sneakers and road maps stuck carelessly in pockets, and time, time, time on their hands. And for a minute, I felt just like one.



I would have loved to sit by the water and watch the world go by, but it was time yet again to go back. Back to unfinished spreadsheets and barely legible phone messages, and more piles of paper than I know what to do with.



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from "The Professor and the Madman", which almost made me miss my stop:



One of the parties to the colloquy was the formidable Dr. James Murray, the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. On the day in question he had traveled fifty miles by train from Oxford to meet an enigmatic figure named Dr. W.C. Minor, who was among the most prolific of the thousands of volunteer contributors whose labors lay at the core of the dictionary's creation...



... "A very good afternoon to you, sir. I am Dr. James Murray of the London Philological Society, and Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. It is indeed an honour and a pleasure to at long last make your acquaintance -- for you must be, kind sir, my most assiduous helpmeet, Dr. W.C. Minor?"



There was a brief pause, a momentary air of mutual embarrassment. A clock ticked loudly. There were muffled footsteps in the hall. A distant clank of keys. And then the man behind the desk cleared his throat, and he spoke:



"I regret, kind sir, that I am not. It is not at all as you suppose. I am in fact the Governor of the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Dr. Minor is most certainly here. But he is an inmate. He has been a patient here for more than twenty years. He is our longest-staying resident."





Now THAT is a preface.



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With a hopeful little lilt to my step, I went once again on a long walk, this time to that evil place, because today's the day. I half expected to see the shelves empty and people with cheshire cat grins walking out of the store. But there it was. A whole shelf. No crowd pushing and shoving. No one even grabbed a copy the whole time I was there, staring at the shelf. And here I was all prepared for a tug-of-war. Oh well. Maybe they already got their copies earlier.



"Walked the streets today, mindless of the way, I argued with my feet..." - "Walk Down the Road" by Cynthia Alexander