Upper East Side, October 2006

From last night:

My apartment is quiet as I write this. My cat is lying on the couch, watching me with bored disinterest through half-lidded eyes. The overhead light glows in soft-focus in the finish on my coffee table. Sure, my steam radiator is faintly hissing, and there’s a siren outside on Third Avenue. But in New York, this passes for quiet.

These past few weeks have reminded me that I’ve got to aggressively seek quiet time, time to breathe and sit and experience the depth and vastness of each moment. I touched on this yesterday when I mentioned sitting, but even when I’m not sitting, I need to be more careful about reserving time and space for myself.

Like many of us, I tend to get swept along by the current of daily activities, and I wind up doing insane things like going to four stage shows in one weekend (last weekend), bracketed by trips to the gym, dinners and lunches with friends, board meetings and committee meetings and volunteer work. Don’t get me wrong: I love my friends, I’m glad I get invited out, and I certainly wouldn’t want that to end. But I tend to let my quiet time be merely the time I’m not doing something else, and it erodes in the current until there’s almost none left.

So I’m going to work harder to make quiet time happen. I’m going to schedule it into my calendar. I need to notice the quiet hiss of my radiator, and the distant sounds of the traffic on a cold night, and the soft golden glow of the overhead light.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Sept. 2006

Looks a bit summery, doesn't it? Just thought I'd whet your appetite for warmer weather and feathery shadows of leaves.

I finally got to go to the Zendo last night - the Zen center where I practice - after about two weeks away. It was so nice to be still after a long period of hyperactivity. I felt much clearer and calmer after three periods of sitting. Whenever I have a gap in my practice like this, I always leave wondering why I allowed it to happen.

It can be hard to sit in the daily rush of activity - it always seems like the one thing that can be put off until later, which is kind of funny, because it has such a profound effect on my state of mind. Why don't I put off making the bed?

E. 41st Street, January 2007

Go ahead - scream. You know you want to.

This is the unbelievable window display at Classic Nail, on the ground floor of the Chanin Building. Apparently the owners think these disembodied hands will make people want to get a manicure.


It looks like a nail salon run by Morticia Addams, doesn't it? With Thing as the principle model?


What makes it even worse is that these hands are FILTHY. They've obviously been sitting in that window for a while, absorbing all manner of noxious city soot.

But don't just window-shop. You too can have glorious claws like this! Just make your way down to Classic Nail!

Chelsea, August 2006

I see this tag all over town, and it's always pink. In this case, I liked the color-coordination with the beige wall.

The charity book sale at my office finally came to an end on Friday, and we spent yesterday selling the 8,000-or-so leftover volumes to a bulk buyer, packing them up and totaling the receipts. Altogether we earned more than $40,000, making this our best year ever by far. (Last year’s receipts added up to $28,500.)

In addition to being able to feel good about raising money for a good cause, I like working for the book sale because I get first crack at the books!

Here’s what I came away with this year:

1. “Buddha or Bust,” Perry Garfinkel -- Garfinkel travels the globe to discover the heart of Buddhism and the reasons for its growing popularity, and discovers himself some things about himself in the process.

2. “Freakonomics,” Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner -- If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it really does work.

3. “Songs of the South,” Jennie Thornley Clarke (ed.) -- A 1913 volume of Reconstruction-era odes to Confederate soldiers and cotton bolls, by poets including Edgar Allan Poe and Sidney Lanier.

4. “Simple Gifts: Lessons in Living from a Shaker Village,” June Sprigg -- Sprigg’s memoir of living with elderly Shaker women in a vanishing settlement in New Hampshire in 1972.

5. “Lullaby,” Chuck Palahniuk -- A novelist I’ve wanted to try.

6. “Caught in Fading Light: Mountain Lions, Zen Masters, and Wild Nature,” Gary Thorp -- A Zen practitioner walks the woods of Northern California, in search of a mountain lion.

7. “Tropical Fish: A Golden Guide” -- I don’t have an aquarium now, but I had one as a child, and this small paperback reminds me of all my fish. (Plus, for a variety of reasons, it was free!)

8. “New York: The Movie Lover’s Guide,” Richard Alleman -- The classic guide to who did what where in New York, on- and off-screen.

9. “Gone to New York,” Ian Frazier -- Essays from a writer for The New Yorker and other magazines.

All of this cost me $26.50. Not too shabby!

Upper East Side, October 2006

This strange creature crawled out of the evolutionary muck and right onto a sidewalk on the Upper East Side. Is it a portrait of someone's pet? A drawing by a child who wants to be a paleontologist? A Geico advertisement? We will never know.

It's been blisteringly cold the last few days, at least for New York. (Minnesotans would probably scoff!) Our low yesterday was 9 degrees, though the temperature right now is a comparatively cozy 24. As a Florida native, it took me a while to learn how to dress in weather like this, and I still don't always do it well. I have to remind myself: Layers. Layers. Layers.

That helps even in my office, which is very drafty. On cold days I get a chilly wind sweeping across my desk from a crack in the window frame, and my "mouse hand" always gets REALLY cold. A strange work complaint, I know.

Tribeca, December 2006

After a busy week working at the book sale and having other business almost every night, this (above) is what I want to do this weekend.

Working at the book sale has been interesting. It’s got me thinking about consumerism. We all know Americans are just out of control when it comes to shopping, but here’s a brilliant example.

The book sale is comprised mainly of used books, but we also get a small amount of donated merchandise from the publication where I work. Some is sent by manufacturers who hope we’ll run an article about it; some is purchased for photo layouts to accompany stories on design and fashion. It then goes to the sale, with the proceeds going to charity.

One of my coworkers bought some merchandise yesterday, including a pillar candle in a simple glass holder, inside a cloth bag, inside a minimalist cardboard box. It bore the name Manolo Blahnik, of the shoe empire. (Who knew Manolo made candles?)

My coworker bought this candle for $5. She then came back to her desk and began researching her purchases to find out what they retail for. Turns out that candle sells for $75 at Bergdorf-Goodman.

I repeat: $75 for a CANDLE.

Do I even have to point out that this is crazy? There’s no other word for it. (Except possibly obscene.)

But here’s what’s also interesting: My coworker got much more enthusiastic about the candle when she found this out. It wasn’t just the candle that excited her; it was the bargain. She wasn’t interested only in the value of the candle to HER; she was interested in its value to society, relative to what she paid for it.

After all, these candles really aren’t candles. They are containers for the Manolo Blahnik name, and all its attendant chic and status. When you buy a $75 candle, the object itself is the least of your purchase.

I'd say she paid about what it's worth.

E. 29th Street, January 2007

We're back in New York with today's photos...back on the street where I live, in fact. I've noticed in the past week or so that the sun seems to rise almost exactly at the end of the street, over the East River. It blazes up, a big orange ball, and sends its rays down the center of the road, no doubt causing a lot of cursing among eastbound drivers on adjacent streets. (Fortunately, my street runs one-way westbound. I wonder if the setting sun does the same thing?)


When it first appears the sun just skims the buildings, giving only select bits a warm glow. This is the Carlton Hotel, an ornate, recently renovated hotel at Madison Avenue and 29th Street. I've never been inside, but one of these days I'm going to check it out, because it was under renovation for a long time and looks quite swanky. There's a promising-looking restaurant in the basement called, ironically, Country.

I took these photos on an icy morning last Saturday, and a few minutes later actually slipped and fell on the sidewalk, causing a perfect stranger to ask if I was OK. Come to think of it, that's the same day I later dropped my camera. I hope I've used up my annual quotient of klutziness!