The psychic and the banker

I heard a psychic explain to a banker in the Tribeca Whole Foods that time goes faster in the year two-thousand-ten, than it ever did before. "You know those days you wake up and you wonder what happened to yesterday?" He nodded. "There's a lot of research behind this," she said, "I won't even begin to trouble you with it." He took a polite sip of tea and burned his tongue. He had showed her how to turn off her new Blackberry. "I'm about to meet a client for a session," she'd said, "and I'd be embarrassed if this thing went off in the middle. You saved my life," she'd said. "Oh, it was easy," he'd said, but she already had him then. She was hanging about his table. "I'll tell you what," she said, "I'll give you a session for half price. Because everything is speeding up."

One table over - on the verge of my twenty-fifth birthday - I am slowing things down. I am dreaming about flying in rose red heels, like a woman of Chagall, and not losing them to the fields below. When I land, the grass is wondrous soft.

Tonight the Astroturf in Columbus Park is strewn with youths who have seen the coming of spring. They are trampling out the vintage.