It was a cool day, 60 degrees, if that.  Yet I went to the park anyway.  There wasn’t much new growth since my last outing…the opposite, in fact.  The dead daffodils were a little browner, the mauve tulips drooped to the ground, dead, the colorless stems of the remaining tulips deader still.  Pansies and South African daisies were holding up; the fritillaria?  Dead.

The mood in the park was decidedly down.  No Beatle tunes at the Imagine Mosaic; it was change of shift for the guitarists.  An old woman, homeless, slept on a small patch of lawn between some azaleas and the road.  Across the road, a young man in a hoodie combed through the trash for bottles and cans.  Before the day was over, the police would announce that 2 bodies had been pulled from Central Park lakes.

A young man on his cell phone was plucking references from his resume in response to the voice on the other end of the call.  He was confident that he could make a contribution to the future of (insert name of hedge fund here).  At Cherry Hill I stopped for 3 horse-drawn carriages, while all around the pedicabs hustled for fares.  Victorian London meets modern Dhaka.

I had hopes for Bethesda Fountain, that under a warm sun I might dispel the gloom, but a young man with an accordion was playing some lugubrious minor-key folk song. On my way to the Norway Maple I passed the Ukrainian art vendor on his bench, feeding the squirrels.  A bird landed on his leg.  He later told me the accordionist was Russian, and he did not like Russians.

I laid out my gear.  Very little sun penetrated the leaf canopy; I hopped around from one side of my case to the other for warmth.

After 30 minutes a couple from England gave me a dollar.  They laughingly refused to hula.  But an Australian family got the spirit from a youngster of 2-3, who stopped to stare.  “Have you got time for a hula today?”

He shook his head yes.  His enthusiastic dad helped him put on a lei, then off we went to the hukilau.  An older sister showed him some moves, for which I awarded her a lei, and mom stood proudly by.  “I always wanted to go to Hawaii,” she said.

“Yet you came to New York for a hula.”  A dollar passed from mom to dad to the toddler to me.  “Aloha.”

A teenaged boy gave me a quarter.

A woman walking by didn’t stop to hula, but she gave me a word.  “It’s the only Hawaiian word I know.  Pulelehua.  It means butterfly.”

It wasn’t getting any warmer.  I launched into my final song, “Little Grass Shack,” when a 30-something woman, bundled up in down vest, hat and hiking boots, put a dollar in my case, bringing my take to $3.25 cents, 45 cents more than my $2.70 break-even.  All things considered, I was lucky to get out of there with my life.