Easter eggs

Walking past Labyrinth Books Friday, a mass of blankets came toward me in a wheelchair. A woman, maybe in her 40s, was pushing it along the sidewalk.

As I got closer, I saw a face peering out from the blankets. It was gaunt and frail. The eyes looked right at me, staying stuck on my face like they do sometimes on portraits at art museums. What would it be like to live that way?

I’m about to let another cup of coffee run through my system, because I’m barely awake. I went to church this morning for the first time since Christmas, at St. John the Divine. Easter doesn’t seem like much now that I’m in New York. It used to mean lunch or dinner at my aunt's. Occasionally it meant the gist of the ritual, which was that life followed death, that someone once made an unimaginable sacrifice. Now that I’ve fallen out of love with faith it meant little more than the voices of a faraway choir and a cafeteria-style brunch with Erin: cornflakes, Crystal Light and scrambled eggs with cheese.