While writing at work, I was listening to Pandora on my headphones, Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs. Robinson Live in Central Park  came on. It vaulted me back to being in the park that night.

A handful of friends from NYU and I had camped out early in the day and had good sight lines (still, we were probably a football field away). Central Park was seedy then. There were no lush green swaths of grass as there are now. We had spread our blanket in a tawny dry dirt field. The crowd swelled around us. Simon and Garfunkel’s vocals were unbelievable, so casual and so poetic.

Listening to that song yesterday, I felt a surge of nostalgia for that time in my life, for having just arrived in NYC, for having no commitments but to study hard my first year at NYU.

I remember that when the concert ended, we all walked out of the park together, shoulder to shoulder. At the park exits, it was very crowded. But we were so happy. We were smiling, humming, singing. We knew it had been a special night.

Yesterday afternoon, after the song played, I got back to work, back to writing about Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy of advocating for poor people. I stared out my window towards Riverside Church.