The Sun Like a Force-Ripe Orange

The sun shining … just there in the sky like a force-ripe orange

That striking image is from Samuel Selvon’s novel The Lonely Londoners. Henry Oliver, who earns the nickname Sir Galahad for his bravado, has just arrived from Trinidad. Here he is on that first morning in the big city – in Westbourne Grove – suddenly realizing he is lost and alone in an alien place “on Queensway watching everybody going about their business, and a feeling of loneliness and fright come on him all of a sudden…”

To compound the sense of desolation and panic, this is London – the unreal city – on a foggy morning

On top of that, is one of those winter mornings when a kind of fog hovering around. The sun shining, but Galahad never see the sun look like how it looking now. No heat from it, it just there in the sky like a force-ripe orange. When he look up, the colour of the sky so desolate it make him more frighten. It have a kind of melancholy aspect about the morning that making him shiver. He have a feeling is about seven o’clock in the evening: when he look at a clock on top a building he see is only half-past ten in the morning. By and by he drift down to Whiteleys. Suddenly he stand up and look back. He wonder if he could find his way back to Moses room! Jesus Christ, suppose he get lost? He ain’t even remember the name of the street where Moses living. In the panic he start to pat pocket to make sure he have money on him, and he begin to search for passport and some other papers he had. A feeling come over him as if he lost everything he have – clothes, shoes, hat – and he start to touch himself here and there as if he in a daze.

It’s not London W11 but we’ve been wandering around our NYC neighborhood these past few days. And the day we were on the Columbia campus the sun was definitely like a force-ripe orange.

Other days have been brighter. Here’s the statue of Samuel Tilden at 112th Street and Riverside Drive.

Tilden won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1876 running on an anti-corruption platform. .He won a majority of the popular vote, but he lost the Electoral College vote, 185-184, to Rutherford B. Hayes in an election that was widely regarded as having been stolen. Sounds familiar. Ironically the inscription on the statue reads: “I trust the people.”

And there is plenty of brightness to be spotted in doorways and entrances ...

…and sidewalk plantings.