And while I was downtown yesterday, I needed to kill some time before meeting Julia and our friend Deborah for dinner (a.k.a. wine), and so I took a seat on a bench in Madison Square Park. While I was there I decided to meditate for a few minutes, mainly because I’ve made a commitment to practice a couple hours a day, and am behind. Doing it al fresco, though, is a bad idea, and I know it. It involves, that is, disguising what you’re doing in order to keep from looking like a fool and giving meditation and meditators a bad name. So yesterday I had to pretend I wasn’t practicing, but instead just sitting up straight on a park bench, staring at one spot in the distance without moving for half an hour. Oy.
Anyway, I tried it: I sat there, put my feet on the ground, my hands in my lap, started the little timer on my iPhone, fixed my gaze in front of me, and…right, of course: there on the park bench across from me, staring straight into my eyes, was a particularly little latina dwarf with a baby carriage.
Deitch 
On the same day, I was trying to do the same thing for the same reason in
nearly empty cafe on West 20th. No dwarf. Jejune Cincinnati transplant somewhere behind me, I turned the page every ten minutes in order that the stillness not become conspicuous.