Sunday Morning

A moment of respite before the helicopters intrude. I started a peaceful Sunday morning with coffee and stretching in the garden. Then a tennis lesson at the Central Park courts.

There’s nothing as gratifying as being a beginner at something. Your learning is visible – like filling up a knapsack of new words or gestures or sounds. Whatever it is your learning. The changes are visible. Yesterday you didn’t know this word and now you do. Learning to count to ten in Swahili. Or the joy of learning the word “kipepeo,” which means “butterfly” in Swahili. Today it was learning to serve. How to toss the ball with a straight left arm, how to stop trying to be fancy and just get it inside the lines.

Learning to play tennis reminds me of the early years learning classical guitar. There was a moment when I started making a full, round and resonant sound. My teacher at the time – Steve – said something to the effect of “now that you’ve done it, you know you can do it. So you own it.” And hour after hour of practicing, I’d get it right. The sense memory begins in retrospect. You knew it felt better and sounded better and you try to remember how your fingers felt.

Same in tennis. Or so it seems to me, two months into my new obsession. You get it right – wrist relaxed, not gripping the racket, just easy – the full swing, left hand guiding the ball into your strings. And you start to recognize the feel of it until stroke after stroke you can just let it happen.

After my lesson, I went to practice against the backboard near the pickle ball courts. I was the only one there until some kid rode right onto the court on his electric bike, music blaring. Ugh. In the 80s we fought the boom boxes, and now they’re back. COVID seemed to have marked the end of manners, civility, adherence to any social norms. I asked him to use earphones. He said he didn’t have them and it’s a public place so he can do what he wants.

Got pretty much the same response to the FAA when I wrote them to complain about the hundreds of helicopter flights that now plague those of us who live between the Hudson River and Central Park. Their response was that I live less than half a mile from two main helicopter routes, as if the routes evolved with the schist outcroppings. They said helicopters fly over the park to avoid interfering with other aircraft.

But no, helicopter fly over Central Park so rich assholes can take the most cliched picture of the park.

I’m just saying.