Little Kyoto by the Canal

Mucky the Dolphin

Ever since our church discontinued the early Sunday Mass (8:00 AM) a few months ago, we have at times found ourselves waiting outside for the doors to open before entering to prepare quietly for the 9:30 Latin Mass. That interval had once been a time of stillness and recollection; without it, we improvised. At first, we passed the time walking around the parish—talking, catching up, and occasionally drifting into reminiscence about earlier, better days.

More recently, however, we altered our routine. By chance, we discovered a small, Zen-like garden tucked between two steel-and-glass buildings along the canal. We half-jokingly christened it “Little Kyoto,” a modest attempt to imagine ourselves, if only briefly, somewhere removed from the bleakness of the surrounding area—a landscape caught between neglect and uneasy redevelopment, where new high-rises rise amid lingering disorder.

The garden itself is sparse but deliberate: gravel, stones, a few carefully placed plants, with small bridges and benches arranged in quiet proportion. It offers, unexpectedly, a pocket of calm. There we sit, watching young people pass by with their dogs, trying—however imperfectly—to recover a contemplative frame of mind before the Liturgy.

Yet the setting resists complete escape. The garden overlooks the Gowanus Canal, long known as one of the most polluted waterways in the United States. In the near distance stands “Mucky the Dolphin,” a life-sized golden dolphin wearing a gas mask—a grimly ironic monument to the animal that wandered into these waters and died there in 2013.

And so the moment remains suspended between two realities: the effort to cultivate stillness and reverence, and the stubborn presence of decay just beyond it.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, May 12th, Feast of San Filippo d’Agira