A restaurant called Caliente Cab Company, which has been on the corner of Bleecker and Sixth for decades, has a giant foaming Margarita in a golden cup on its facade. Apparently the Margarita has recently been attracting pigeons. Management has installed a robotic owl to scare them away. Apparently it doesn’t work.
I love New York.
Best sight on the subway today. The rings, the bling, the hat, the shades, and the Rubik’s Cube. He didn’t put it down all the way uptown. I love New York.
Plumbers in and out for days. Latino guys, one speaks a little English, one almost none. I speak just enough Spanish to follow along. Little-English guy explains to no-English guy what he wants to do, in Spanish of course. Gets a confused look. Re-explains, and to check that no-English guy gets it, he asks him, “Capice?”
“Capice?” I ask.
“Sí, like the Mafia, I ask him does he capice.” Little-English guy presses his finger to the side of his nose.
No-English guy presses his finger to the side of his nose, too, nods solemnly.
I do the same.
I love New York.
Went out this morning early, in the bright sun. Lots of dogs and photogs: the day was absolutely gorgeous.
Steps
Car waits to be dug out
Wheeling the bike back into the garage (after she flopped into the snow to flatten a path)
Another bike to come back for
Be a while before this pile melts
Down by the river (Carlos Dews, this one’s for you)
This isn’t usually a pool, it’s a small inlet with a bridge over it about three feet above the water
Scrollwork on the back of my bench
Why I couldn’t sit on my bench this morning
Car, somewhere in there
Snow on low wall, against high wall
Grace is everywhere
Went out a second time about an hour ago. Snow’s blowing harder. Walked — okay, trudged — in the other direction, not toward the river but into the neighborhood streets. Went maybe ten blocks away. Out and back took an hour. Here are the afternoon’s photos. Now I’m done, settled in, about to go back to the book I’m working on and then watch the Knicks, who apparently made it to Charlotte last night although the airports were closed by the time they were finished losing to the Clippers.
Door as I was leaving the building
Statue in the park
Green means go but so what, really?
Wall
Sidelined sidewalk cafe
Snowplow oops
I think we’ll come back tomorrow for the bike
Rather Gothic gate
We NYers will take our icicles where we can get them
Hope the 6th Precinct doesn’t need that car
Or that one (the 24-hour pharmacy, by the way, is closed)
Pipe connection
This is a traffic-ticket vehicle, so you KNOW they don’t need this one
Scrollwork
Citibikes going nowhere
Grate
Vines on the wall
These are some of the photos I took this morning in NYC. Yes, I was out. I go to the river every morning before I start work, by which I mean, every morning. The exceptions are morning when I have some early appointment, but the exceptions are not weather. Weather is part of the point.
Because I learned this in a sudden epiphany years ago: gorgeousness and pleasantness are not the same. What happened was, I went with a friend to Storm King Art Center. It was summer, July or August, a very hot day. Storm King’s a vast outdoor sculpture park, conceived and operated to present, well, vast outdoor sculptures. We’d been roaming over the rolling hills for about half an hour, sweating as we ambled from diSuvero to Noguchi, when it started to rain. My friend was all for running into the small house they use to show small works. But this was just a warm rain, no thunder, no lightning, and we’d been so hot and sweaty. And a Henry Moore was glistening white and wet in the distance. My friend went in; I stayed outside, meandering around on the soggy grass, seeing the glistening Moore, watching drops plink into puddles in Noguchi’s carved stones. And I realized: physical discomfort is unavoidable, and everywhere. My back hurts after a couple of hours at my desk. I have to grab for air playing basketball. Nothing, as long as I live in this physical body, is without cost. So why not get wet in a fabulous rain near plinking Noguchis?
This philosophy has served me well. I got to see double rainbows in Mongolia after a cold wet night.
I tramped through — and fell down in — slippery mud in the terraced rice fields of Yunnan, and I saw this.
And I went out today in Snowzilla, and found many things.
Outside from inside, just before I left.
Holly
Snowplow tracks
The river near my bench
Light and its reflection
Grating
Sledding kids (what a good daddy they have)
Trees and wall
Benches
Trees
I wasn’t at the river alone
Hard-working building super
Wind gusts, tires’ chains clink,
Snow tapping on jacket’s hood,
Snowplow’s mighty roar.
Horizontal rail,
Slanted snow, roiling river,
Twirling windborne leaf.
Sledding children laugh,
Spin down pine grove’s slippery hill,
Tumble into drift.
Tower on far bank
Glows in shaft of morning sun
Against charcoal sky.
Tide at highest point.
Just twelve pilings visible.
Hundreds more submerged.
No ships. Slow south wind.
Long low swells slide into shore,
Slip along seawall.
Not mine, not Eating in Translation’s, but Oxford University Press’s SAVORING GOTHAM. You win it at Eating in Translation, one of my favorite websites, so check out the contest rules. It makes a great holiday gift. As does, of course, a 2016 SJ Rozan Calendar.
Happy holidays!
Pair of soccer balls Float slowly on river's glass, Glow in morning sun. Two paddling gadwalls Slicing through waveless water Raising tiny wake. Long low swell rolls in, Angles against seawall, breaks, Single wave rolls out. And don't forget your 2016 SJ Rozan Calendars! Perfect for every room in your house. Also, your friends' houses. Every room.
