 Presidential election on November 8, 2016, with ballots cast in San Francisco. Even as some of us get older — very older, older than we care to admit numerically — there’s always that moment when someone says, You can’t be that age, and you almost believe them.
But you are that age. Long past the era when Seals & Crofts’ Summer Breeze was the soundtrack of every warm night, and long past the high school days when our class turned Junior–Senior Prom into a dress‑up event. I still remember our class beauty and great pianist Staci, the head cheerleader — beautiful, fearless — showing up as a pregnant housewife and giving birth to her pretend baby at lunchtime. Only in the South could someone pull off a stunt like that and still be crowned prom royalty. Summer Breeze was our prom theme that year, and it was also the first time I ever got so drunk I felt blind — literally couldn’t see — and still drove home when I absolutely shouldn’t have. I guess my guardian angel was working overtime that night, because I could have been gone a long time ago. You’d think as you get older the need to party fades away. It doesn’t. It changes shape, sure — you’re not out every night, working full-time and still finding energy to dance until closing — but the impulse remains. And sometimes you still get out of control because alcohol works differently in an older body. Hangovers last longer. Mine stretch into two days where I don’t want to do anything except scroll through a hundred thousand meaningless things. And with all this fuss about voting — vote by mail, early voting, absentee ballots — I remember when I voted by mail in San Francisco. It was easier than standing in line at the booths on Election Day, especially with all those propositions on the ballot. You needed a quiet place at home to read through everything and decide whether you were voting yea or nay. Mostly, I voted nay. Though I’ll say this: if a person running for Supervisor showed up at my door — which happened often in the Castro’s District 8, later renumbered to District 10 in the 2000s — I voted for them. If you took the time to knock, you earned the vote. That was the rule. Florence, South Carolina, and Peekskill are the only places where I’ve ever voted in person, usually on Election Day. This one is important, so I’ll be there — just like the time we voted in Florence about liquor sales on Sunday. That vote mattered to someone who still liked to party, so that was definitely a yes. Funny how age changes everything except the few things that never change at all.
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 Whiskey River at that quiet hour when the only person in sight is the bartender, making them the most interesting presence in the place. It’s Sunday in Peekskill, mid‑September, that strange pause before the leaves commit to their yellows and crimsons and reds. Fall is the season most of us love more than summer — unless you’re lucky enough to have a place on Cape Cod or Martha’s Vineyard or somewhere along the rocky Maine coast, where the fog rolls in like a Stephen King prologue. But here, in this friendly little town, I keep wondering how downtown businesses even survive — with the exception of Whiskey River, which seems to operate on its own gravitational pull. How many delis does a downtown really need? Times have changed, sure, but Peekskill needs something that draws people with money — people who spend freely, who aren’t hung up on the nonsense of race and all the tired black‑and‑white arguments that never seem to die. And this is coming from a writer who cares very little about such things, because size, color, all that noise — none of it tells you what the kitchen needs to feel anything. Peekskill needs bike lanes, too. I never thought much about it until an acquaintance — and I have more of those than friends, because I’ve never been keen on friends — told me he hates bicyclists in the streets. He’d seen too many this weekend. Car people tend to resent us cyclists, even though we have the same rights. I always give the right of way when things get tight; the automobile is the more powerful creature. But I’ve never had a problem with drivers here. They usually move aside, as if they understand the fragile choreography of a cyclist threading through town. And yes — I agree with Blanche DuBois. I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers. Acquaintances, strangers, the people you meet once and never again — they’re easier than friends. They don’t demand anything except the moment you’re already in. I’m not detached or delusional, just a little mad sometimes — the way all of us go a little mad sometimes. As for downtown on a Sunday in mid‑September, not much is happening. The streets are nearly empty — the kind of quiet that makes you notice every shuttered door and every “Open” sign glowing for no one. It’s the sort of stillness that makes you wonder what keeps these small businesses going, what invisible thread holds them through weekends like this. A small Target might help — though fears and politics would probably kill the idea before it ever reached a planning board. Still, it would be nice to have something with real quality control, something not cheaply made from China. A Vees Boutique brick‑and‑mortar would suit this town — black‑owned, clothes for women of all sizes. Or Cut Loose, with their San Francisco‑dyed fabrics and American‑made stitching. Anything that brings foot traffic. Women make up the majority of shoppers; men hover around forty percent. Peekskill could use that energy. But today, the town feels suspended — waiting for the leaves to turn, waiting for cooler air, waiting for something new to arrive. A Sunday before the colors, quiet enough to hear your own thoughts, even the mad ones.  Main Street on a Sunday is alive with trees but nothing else.  From the waterfront bell toll to the meat‑heavy supermarket and that Southern ghost of a house on South Street, the whole day moved like a Friday pretending to be the 13th. Some Fridays qualify as Friday the 13th without actually being the 13th. Today — Friday, September 11, 2026 — wasn’t the 13th, but it carried that strange, unsettled charge. I left the apartment on a simple mission: feed the seagulls, the pigeons, and whatever other bird species happened to wander by. I didn’t expect to walk straight into the 9/11 Day of Remembrance down at the waterfront. Firemen in red shirts, Peekskill police, volunteers, families — all gathered in the 9/11 section of Riverfront Green. A bell tolled at the exact minute the first plane struck the North Tower. A man read the names of Peekskill’s volunteer firefighters. It was moving in that quiet, unadorned way these ceremonies can be. I saw one girl crying in the arms of another. That image stayed with me longer than the speeches. Not how I expected my day to start, but that’s how it started. After the crowd dispersed, I headed off to finish errands and somehow ended up on Welcher Avenue, then at the new Peekskill Supermarket where Apple Farms used to be — that strip‑mall stretch near McDonald’s and Westchester Diner, just off the freeway. The place is built for meat lovers. Too much meat, honestly. One tray held something that, at first glance, looked like a tiny piglet curled in plastic. I’m still not sure — maybe it was just a stomach shaped like a piglet, something disturbingly embryo‑like — but it was horrible enough that I didn’t stay to solve the mystery. I just left the aisle. The store smelled funny — something like slaughter, something I didn’t care for — but I still bought a few things: very lean 96/4 ground beef, tangerines, granola, Starbucks beans. Their lemons were cheaper than C‑Town’s: fifteen for eighty‑five cents versus twelve for ninety‑seven. Little things, yes, but little things matter when everything else has skyrocketed. I didn’t even check the price of the ground beef. I only saw the total at checkout. The Spanish girl made me laugh — she read the number backward and told me $83.94. I said, “What!” and she corrected herself: $38.94. Meanwhile, a long line had formed at the other counter for a raffle to win free groceries. That’s how desperate people are now. Did I enter? Why not. I never expect to win anything, but sometimes you fill out a ticket because the clerk tells you to. Heading back toward downtown, I walked a stretch of South Street with no sidewalks — an industrial corridor past chemical and salt factories, Charles Point Business Park looming in the distance. An old dilapidated house stopped me in my tracks. It looked more like something from the rural South than Peekskill. I stood there for a long moment, took pictures, then continued on to Riverwalk and finally home. By the time I reached home, the whole day still felt like a Friday pretending to be the 13th.   It was kind of neat — an old word from the 60s — showing a man where the collard greens were the other day. He wanted me to identify every vegetable in the garden at Peekskill Regeneration Farm, and that’s when I realized I didn’t know the names of everything. Which was fine, because neither did he. We just knew what was edible, and we laughed about that. I had been messing around, trying to avoid him and his little dog down John Street and Oakside School at Decatur as I slipped into the garden, but he ran over anyway, asking where the collards were. I wasn’t sure at first. They were tiny things, nothing like the precious giants my cousin Aunt Lilly used to grow on Cortlandt Street. People had already picked the bottom leaves, so I picked a few myself and made collard greens for the weekend. I didn’t expect to run into him again, but I did — in the elevator. Turns out we’re neighbors. He reminded me of our garden encounter, which was neat in its own way. Kind of nice that he lives on the floor above me. He was heading out to find a babysitter for his dog. That was the beginning and end of that. Today I’m cleaning up my inbox, embarrassingly behind — correspondence dating back to July. Messy work I thought I could do soberly, but it’s given me a headache. Seeing things I should have answered long ago. So I made myself a rum and lemonade to ease the burden as I go through all this paper. I remembered that the guy asked when everything in the garden should be harvested. I told him “now,” because I didn’t really know and didn’t care to look it up. But I see my little cucumbers — more of them now — are coming to an end. And the tomatoes have finally decided to produce one tiny fruit, a small green promise hanging on even as the season winds down. And through all of it, I’ve got Drake in a fast remix version playing — the kind that makes you move a little in your chair, loosen your shoulders, and let the day feel lighter than it started.  End of day, end of season — someone else out there doing their own careful work while my little tomato tries its best. Peekskill always has another angle.   My Saturday office: a wooden corner, a river view, and Bear Mountain supervising. This morning’s adventure took me away from downtown and across the Jan Peeck Bridge to the Annsville Paddlesport Center — an intimate little park that juts out into Annsville Creek, four miles east of Bear Mountain. If the sidewalk hadn’t ended there, I would’ve kept walking. It’s that kind of place. You cross the bridge, pass Annsville Circle, and suddenly you’re in another world — dynamic views of Peekskill behind you, Annsville Creek beside you, Bear Mountain rising in the distance, and the Hudson stretching out like a quiet invitation. What a magnificent way to spend a morning doing absolutely nothing except being alive. Just standing there, seeing the beautiful earth, all that water, and all those fishermen by the creek casting their lines into the stillness. There was one spot I loved most — a simple bench with a board built like a table. I set my mug down, stared at the view, and thought: One day I'm bringing my laptop here. This is a writing desk disguised as furniture. I suppose the best way to know a place — or even let the place know you — is to occasionally spend the day as a tourist, seeing where you live through someone else’s eyes. It makes you appreciate where you are, and the love you feel for it grows.
    September finally slipped in last night — not with a breeze, not with a calendar announcement, but with rain. Real rain. The kind that doesn’t ask permission. It hammered the balcony, slapped the windows, and dragged you out of sleep like a detective knocking at the door in the middle of the night. You didn’t turn on the lights. Noir doesn’t need them. You just stood there in the dark, watching the downpour carve silver lines across the glass. Across the street, the artist’s studio flickered its usual palette — pink, blue, purple — like someone was painting the storm from the inside out. You drank a glass of water, listened to the sky empty itself, and went back to bed without a single dream daring to follow you. Morning arrived with that strange clarity you get after a night like that — the feeling that you woke up a little smarter, a little sharper, like the rain cleaned the inside of your head too. And with that new intelligence, you solved the mystery of Joaquin’s eggplant: slice it, salt it, pepper it, bless it with parmesan and olive oil, then let the crockpot do the slow, silent work. Four hours. Hands off. A recipe fit for a man who prefers his Thursdays to behave like Thursdays. Outside, the city is shifting. Summer is losing its grip. Autumn is waiting in the wings, rehearsing its entrance for the 22nd or 23rd. Some call it Indian summer. You call it transition — that liminal space where the air cools, the colors deepen, and the world feels like it’s about to tell you a secret. Painted People can wait. Heaven can wait. Even adventure can wait. Today is just Thursday, and the rain already wrote the opening scene.  Jolly sunflowers greet walkers along North James Street near Howard Street Hill. Everything used to be so easy — talking about dreams meant to last forever. Nowadays, you celebrate when they don’t, when the people around you aren’t forever. It’s not that your heart is cold; it’s just that the greatest need you have is yourself. And some days it feels far easier to love a stranger you’ll never have to see twice than a man who interrupts your writing paradise and can’t seem to help himself. That’s the point you learn: not everyone is meant to stay, not everyone is meant to be carried, and not everyone deserves the part of you that writes. So you close the door gently, you return to your page, and you let the day be yours again. You don’t bring me flowers anymore… and you think I could learn how to tell you goodbye — even though the truth is, I cared more than I ever should have.  Crossing paths with a woman in an alley in Manhattan on a quiet, lonely night. The way Play Misty for Me drifts through the morning — Clint Eastwood brooding, Roberta Flack singing The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face — gives the day a mythical kind of feeling. I edited just one paragraph of my manuscript, slowly, as if I had a hundred more years to keep the same pace until the end of time. It’s a misty morning, light rain sprinkling the windowpanes, the air smelling clean and new. The whooshing sound of cars on rain‑soaked streets echoes like waves turning over on a quiet seashore. I try to take advantage of days like this — not only to write, but to see nature in the mist. The mountain peeking out over the river is a meditative sight, silvered by the fog, a reminder to breathe and be grateful. Especially after yesterday. Lingering in Times Square, flirting with a cart vendor because he was cute, unaware of the horror unfolding just steps away — a woman in a pink blouse and a crossover purse appearing out of nowhere with two kitchen‑table butcher knives, stabbing strangers as if pulled by some terrible force. A woman killed. A man stabbed in the back. Lives changed in an instant. Play misty for me — and may the woman rest in peace, and the man recover. Play misty for me, New York… but leave out the violence, and the mental ills that haunt your streets.  A misty morning with light rain and a silver sky welcomes the day in Peekskill.  I loathe political entanglements — especially whatever passes for politics in this particular era. Everything feels overheated, underthought, and strangely theatrical. It makes me think of childhood, when learning the names of the Great Lakes felt like a rite of passage. Though I doubt most Americans today could name all five off the top of their heads without confusing the Erie Canal with Lake Erie, or forgetting that Michigan is both a lake and a state. And then there’s Ontario, Huron, and the biggest, deepest of them all — Superior.
There’s an easy way to remember them: HOMES — Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior. The dullness of Lake America — the flat, pixelated version shown only on Google Maps for American users — is nothing like the geography we grew up with. The Great Lakes once felt like monuments, like mythic bodies of water that defined the shape of the country. But with the current administration, HOMES feels more like HAMES — a country slipping into ham‑fisted chaos, a place I love turning into something unrecognizable, a nation losing its memory of what it once was. Sometimes I wonder if the whole country has a kind of dementia — not the medical diagnosis, but the metaphorical one: a loss of memory, language, problem‑solving, and the ability to think clearly about daily life. Especially for the immigrant who wakes up every morning wondering if today is the day he’ll be sent back to some distant country he barely remembers. How many people can recall the first time they ever met a politician? I can. I remember shaking the hand of one I mistook for a movie star — perfectly combed white hair, posture like a marble statue. Fritz Ernest Hollings, a blue‑bird Charlestonian Democrat senator, standing in a line of dignitaries at some college event where we students had to dress up and parade past them as if they were royalty. They shook our hands, said a few polite words, and moved us along. I never forgot how handsome I found Hollings — how he didn’t look human, or at least not like any of us. And I suppose I still think that way about politicians today. They don’t look or act like any of us. They stand in their own strange light, separate from the people they claim to represent. Maybe that’s why HOMES has become HAMES. Maybe that’s why the country feels like it’s forgetting itself. Maybe that’s why I keep writing — to remember what still matters.  The cooler weather is a welcome relief — the kind that makes the colors on Fort Hill shift earlier than expected. Orange, or maybe crimson, starting to whisper through the leaves at the top of the ridge. A small preview of autumn, even though summer hasn’t quite let go.
Joaquin is back and forth in my life, drifting like a warm front that never fully commits. I suppose we’re best as family rather than lovers, though the latter keeps happening — especially on mornings when I lose my glasses in the sheets and have to shake them out like a man searching for treasure after a storm. Novena is the first cucumber born in my sky garden — or at least that’s the name I’m giving her as she grows. It came to me because Joaquin, half‑teasing and half‑serious, asked what our child would be named if two men could have one together. Novena was the first name that rose up — maybe because it carries the number nine inside it, maybe because it’s also a prayer, the kind whispered over nine days when you’re hoping for something to take root. A bee must have found its way to all that pollen the male flowers were producing. I tried the other method too: a Q‑tip dipped gently into the male blossom, then brushed against the female. Maybe that helped. Maybe it didn’t. Joaquin swears he saw a bee on the balcony, so who knows what tricks Mother Nature performs when no one is looking — even without human interference. He’s brought so many gifts lately that I’m unsure what to do with all the tomatoes I don’t need. I’ll figure out something in the crockpot over the weekend. And then there are the eggplants, and the pantry ground beef I’d never buy on my own. Sometimes I think people who love you have a way of feeding you more than you asked for — as if nourishment were a language they speak fluently, even when you’re not hungry. It’s something I’m aware of, and something I’ll resist gently — grateful, but still myself. |
AuthorCHARLES PEARSON 
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