2003-04-18 - 11:17 p.m.

And I'm home, and I've got to tell you, things around here ain't so good. Walking to the subway this week, I realized that almost all the shops on my immediate block have closed. The toy store remains, the M@C store, the bookstore. But 4 have closed in the past month, and 3 were already gone. There's a notice slid under the door, the building maintenance people may be striking, if it happens we are to hold our recycling, take our garbage to the curb, take ourselves up on the elevator, and don't worry about safety, we'll have a full time security guard in the lobby. Great. Not that any of that is hardship, to me, as I've always done all that. But it's just one more thing, one sign of the times. The garbage is already piling up at the curb, and Gloomberg is closing firehouses and cutting after school programs, and there are intimations that we could be heading back to the '70's, where Manhattan was at it's most dangerous, it's dirtiest. It's not good.

And on the other hand, I walk around like I am a camera these days, framing shots and squinting to line up all the flowering white trees that line the block. The wooden planters outside buildings are slowly being filled with daffodils and hyacinth, and I'm back to yoga and eating well and I'm feeling pretty good, overall.

And I've been walking to work, 30 blocks each way, and I have found a deli that I stop in, after the first ten blocks, for coffee to go. On Wednesday, (oh blissfull, sunny, 85 degree Wednesday..)I was waiting at the counter when the song "Knock On Wood" came on, and I looked down the counter and all the people standing there, three or four, were singing along and dancing a little, kind of swaying, and I realized that I was too. Heh.

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