Last week, when I made a quick visit to New York, a representative of the local wildlife confronted me with the cold hard facts.
The squirrel I met in the East Village has no illusions about the future: things are hard now, they’ll be even harder later, and then, after the really-hard-later, what we’ll get diving down on us from the sky like a bird of prey, is the new hard. It won’t be the familiar hard you know from a nut, the kind you can eventually crack. It won’t even be the hard of a stone, which you can probably crumble if you’re just patient and stubborn enough. Things around here are going to be a whole different kind of hard – deadbolt hard, the kind of hard that breaks your heart and your teeth – and my bushy-tailed friend from downtown can feel it in the air.
The disorienting smell of legal pot that hovers like a cloud under the 13th Street scaffolding isn’t fooling anyone: the future is here, and it’s spoiling for a fight. This whole business won’t end well: man will rise up against his brother, woman against her sister, squirrel against squirrel, tree against tree, nut against nut. Dark days are coming. But the rodent is ready for it. Hoarding nuts, removing followers, deleting online profiles, digging his nails as deep as he can into the basic, the real, the unplugged. Scurrying along the sidewalk like a rat, with no plan and no direction, but with a way forward. He doesn’t need any current affairs, doesn’t answer to anyone.
The squirrel I met in the East Village has no illusions about the future that lurks around the corner. But until it comes, he swears, there’s also a present—right here, within arm’s reach. A juicy, fresh present that you can sink your teeth into. A present you can chew fast and swallow, chew and swallow, while there’s still time.
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