A happy dog cruisin’ in California on his way to Thanksgiving dinner.

When we got back to the city, all the leaves had been summarily removed from the trees and deposited on the ground, making Riverside Park look gray and wintry and dull. And the idea of moving to California seemed like a brilliant incontrovertible idea. But then…the tree that blooms every December 1st…

and then I heard a red tailed hawk and looked up and there were two of them sitting in the trees, Here is a bad iphone picture of them.

As for this storied move, it hasn’t yet happened. The apartment is not yet sold, and so we live in limbo, which is to say we live exactly as we have been but we have to make the beds every day.

Most important of all, for me, is that I have just read My Antonia for the first time! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I am so lucky to have grown up so illiterate. This is a book most people read in junior high school. I was much too pretentious in junior high school to understand this subtly simple book. Now on to O Pioneer! I think. Maybe we should move not to LA but to Nebraska. Waddya think?

A female cardinal landed on our balcony today and wanted very much to get in. There are birds you just fall in love with and the female cardinal is one, partly because as a child I watched one hatch her eggs in a nest visible from our porch (the cat unfortunately ate all her babies), partly because they are just so beautiful, so subtle and elegant in their plumage and then, pop!, that orange bill.

When I went to take the dog out tonight, the elevator door opened and three teenage boys were huddled around something I imagined must be a joint until they moved apart to make room for Hector and me and I saw it was a book. They were hulking in that teenage boy way and they smelled of beer.
“No, listen, Crime and Punishment was published in 1866. There was so much going on then with him…”
“Just back from Siberia…”
“1866, man.”
They all shook their heads in grave agreement and held the door for me as I exited. I love boys.

During a beautiful rainy walk in Riverside Park the other day, I saw a coupe of juncos–what I know as slate-colored juncos, because that’s what Roger Tory Peterson calls them. I looked them up on my fab iphone birdwatching app so I could listen to their all, and I couldn’t find them because they are called something completely different. It was very vexing. But juncos are so pretty with their tiny yellow beaks and that jaunty flash of white when they fly. The reason I was out walking in the rain was that People had come to look at the apartment. People keep coming, which means we live under marshal law and keep the place in perfect order, not easy for three people who who work at home. I have very mixed feelings about these People. I want them to love the apartment, to ooh and ahh and be bowled over have their socks knocked off. I want them to make us fabulous offers, hundreds of thousands of dollars above the asking price, to become engaged in a heated bidding war, to bribe us with Billy Cort Salmon champagne the 500 dollar Fry boots I want. On the other hand, whoever heard of 500 dollar Fry boots and how dare people come looky lou at our house and think they can wrench it from our tightly clasped hands?

The rain was a steady drizzle and the sky was the kind of slate gray that made the colors impossibly bright. Janet and Hector and I wandered around, some of us exclaiming at the beauty, others of us peeing, until we took shelter in the Boat basin Cafe. It was empty and closed, but the strings of lights were lit up and the blue and white checked table clothes were on the tables and it was dry and quiet and beautiful sitting in the gloom listening to the rain and watching the boats sway in the wind. Yet another remarkable day in New York City. Here are some pictures:

photo by paulhobson.co.uk
Today is day three. The apartment went on the market on Sunday. There were, apparently, 19 groups of people traipsing through, which we were happy about, not so much because we think one of them will buy, or even because we want one of them to buy, but because after all that cleaning, sorting, discarding and arranging, we wanted to amortize the sparkling pristine order. The more people who saw how neatly the books were shelved, the less labor was expended per person viewing the apartment, and so the more value we got out of the effort. Very satisfying.
But then more people came yesterday, more today, and more will be coming tomorrow. How much longer can we keep the sink free of coffee cups, the bedside tables free of pills and pencils? And there is the ambivalence, the terrible wrenching confusion of Potential Seller’s Remorse. How can we leave New York when the sky is so blue? When the starlings are whistling from the crab apple trees? Do they even have starlings in Los Angeles? Who is the mayor of Los Angeles? Villegarosa, maybe? What can that possibly mean to someone weaned on the whining of Ed Koch, the ranting of Rudy Giuliani and quiet conversation of Mayor Bloomberg?
It is true that everyone in LA is from New York, or very nearly true, and it is also true that starlings are an English bird introduced to the U.S. by someone who wanted all the birds of Shakespeare to reside here. And finally it is true that Jet Blue has a special fare for Oct 31. This is all reassuring. If I were in Los Angeles now, I could fly back to New York on October 31 for 31 dollars! With all the other New Yorkers. To see the starlings. Thank you, Shakespeare.

What I saw this week:
I saw, and read, Joseph Roth’s brilliant collection of journalism (as it should be written) about pre world war II Berlin, called What I Saw. The Radeztky March by Joseph Roth is on of the great novels of the 20th century. I had never read his journalism, though. This book reminds you that journalism can be about something, can be beautiful, can be short and still full of integrity, can be restrained and still powerful, can be true.

Here, in a way that in no way reflects the dark, careful beauty of Roth’s book, is what else I saw this week:

I saw a blue jay mobbing a preening red tailed hawk
I saw a lipstick orange smartcar
I saw red when my mother said she just didn’t know if she trusted Obama
I saw three lavender jelly-fish in the hudson river
I saw a couple sitting on their stoop with their shiny calico cat
I saw a fallen green apple in the park
I saw the world from a bicycle for the first time in 20 years

Thanks to Onegoodbumblebee, one of my favorite sites, I have discovered the best, most satisfying procrastination tool yet–sketchfu! It’s like an online etch-a-sketch in color. Some of the artists are really good. Some are funny. Some, like the one above, are just fun. And you can playback their (or your own) drawing, so that it’s like watching an animated film. Like those Woody Woodpecker cartoons where you would see the hand actually drawing Woody. Woody Woodpecker was a real pain in the ass, wasn’t he? I guess he still is. But I like him.


I like woodpeckers in general. First, they are big and clearly marked and easy to identify. Second, their little brains have internal helmets so they don’t get rattled and end up punch drunk like poor Mohammed Ali. I love Mohammed Ali. I met him at some gala dinner somewhere. It was thrilling. He was very polite and warm. People were so excited they were having trouble breathing.