Today: I saw a tree being shaken in the wind like some massive, invisible hand had it round the neck and was flinging it back and forth; it snowed—just a little, and it was almost wet enough to be rain, but, oh, it was snow; a woman on the subway flicked her young daughter in the neck with her index finger and you could hear it go thuck; I walked past a man on Ninth Street who smelled like burning.

Also: at one point, walking head down so I wouldn’t get speared in the eye by some piece of New York City crap swirling about in the wind, I looked at my feet in my Chuck Taylors, and thought, “My feet are huge! But huge!”

And also: I found a tea place in the Slope that’s open till one in the a.m., which will maybe become my new place to read, away from the TV and the dishes and the laundry and the Lucky and Vanity Fair magazine subscriptions; and right after I got there they stopped playing the silly bongo music on the audio system and went straight into the Shirley Bassey remix album and then selections from the Bright Eyes “Lifted” album, all of which is totally a sign that this place is A-plus.