What Colors the Steel Sky Blue

Late July, the weather is unbearable. Still, I am on the street, on the go because I can’t stand myself all cooped up in the apartment all alone. I frequently go to Tompkins Park in East Village these days, mostly because it is a rel strange mix of people. There's the base layer of homeless people speaking in the language of me, add to that the hippies of East Village having heated discussions about which color has more of the fire element in it, then in the shade sitting on a bench a celebrity with his girlfriend --pretending to shy away from the attention of others and of course others like me: the unemployment, multi-nationality marginalities of the lower-mid Manhattan.

In the green gray background of the Tompkins Park I suddenly noticed a spot of pure white, a color one does not come across often on Manhattan. As I followed the winding park path, the trees that were in the way first came closer into view to reveal that the white stains on the green were actually people, then the trees moved to the side as the path made a sharp left turn to reveal 5-6 people painted all white head to toe and wearing white clothes.

This was the kind of visual moment that stops you and forces you to re-evaluate your senses before you fully accept the anomaly. Although I double/triple checked my vision, the white people were not going away. They seemed to be some sort of a family on an afternoon's outing. They had a little baby and everything. There were other people interested and the white people did not mind at all posing for pictures. All this time none of them uttered a word to another.

I finally concluded that this was one of those wonderful moments in New York City when you experience something otherwise you would never experience anywhere. Here was a group of actors that were all dressed up for the part of a mime family but had thrown themselves onto the ever so gray, every gloomy and glaring scene of the East Village.

I followed them around while they made their rounds around the park for a while. Then I decided to leave before they dismantled and revealed their secret. I would rather leave them in mid-act and assume that they kept of living their ultra-white, ultra-calm, ultra-quiet life in a coop building colored none other than pure white.