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It goes from a little blustery with some flurries floating around to complete whiteout conditions in a frighteningly short amount of time. Snow blasts against the windows and howls down the street, the uninsulated walls of the building where we work suddenly freeze, and I notice that about halfway up the giant window of our booth it is actually snowing inside - faintly, but definitely snowing.

I convince a market manager to put her hand up to feel, and she acknowledges that yes, it is in fact snowing, and then she just leaves.

She turns around as she’s going and says, “We’re you expecting more of a reaction?"

Pouting

The collie-something mix lying on the floor of the PetcCo as I walk in gives me the saddest look I’ve ever seen - just heartbreaking depths of despair and sorrow - while her owner stands over her with his hands on his hips and an expression of disgust.

“Oh, you’re doing really well,” I tell the dog encouragingly.

“No she’s not. She doesn’t want to leave, so she’s pouting,” her owner says, and his dog sighs a long-suffering sigh.

Stand Clear

We start to accelerate in the tunnel, the steady hum of the wheels on the tracks ratcheting up to a rumble, then a roar.

I wonder if this time we’ll finally manage to hit warp speed. If the light that illuminates the orange B on every car, the gray aquarium light of the interior of the train pouring out of the windows and car doors, will streak out in long trails behind us, then flatten and smear into imaginary colors as we hit the event-horizon of light and shoot out of the ground up into space.

But of course we slow down and pull into Grand Street station, doors open, stand clear.

Manual Steering

His father reaches down and places one hand on top of his head, like the man is palming a basketball, and with that hand, he guides the small child through the crowds getting off the L train to the stairs.

At the stairs, however, he changes tactics, and, instead of palming the child's head, he begins walking up the stairs behind him, sort of herding him with his legs as the child, slowly and deliberately, begins  climbing the stairs.

The father doesn’t look bored or impatient, or even mildly put out by having to do this with his kid. He reaches down at the top of the stairs and, once again, steers the child through the crowds.

You Make the Color

“So I spent years,” he continues, still holding his boyfriend’s hand, “I spent years as a little kid looking for a blue crayon that matched that color,” pointing to a blue morpho butterfly shimmering on the shelf.

“You know the story about that color though, right?” I tell him. "The wings are covered in millions and millions of tiny, clear scales that are so close together that they act like prisms, and only the blue light escapes.”

“So the color isn’t in the wings at all - it’s what happens in the light between the wings and your eyes."

At the Rock Show

The band is blasting out nostalgic hard-rocks hits, the floor is packed, the mezzanine is packed, the bar is packed, and the stairs from the mezzanine to the floor are also packed, so I’ve shotgunned my beer to avoid spilling it on anyone as people jostle me to get by, and now I’m stuck at the top of the stairs trying to get back to my friend on the floor.

A woman in front of me bobs and weaves a little, jockeying for just the right moment to get down the stairs, and I shout to her, “If you make a break for it, I’ll back you up.”

“Oh, are you trying to get to my husband too?” she yells back, and we both laugh.

But a few minutes later, she makes it through the crowd down to the bottom of the stairs, and I do follow her to my friend, and when she catches my eye, I shrug and shout, “I told you so."

After the Rain

I’m midway down the block when a pretty woman rounding the corner of the music conservatory leans down to her young child and motions for him to look up, and the two of them break into huge smiles.

When I get past them I turn around to look in the direction they were looking, already knowing what I’ll see, and sure enough a rainbow stretches across the clearing sky shot with rose- and salmon-tinted clouds.

I turn back to my route home down 7th Avenue with a big grin on my face, and an older woman coming out of a restaurant across the street sees me, seeing her, and she smiles.

My smile gets bigger, and she swings her long hair and lifts a cigarette to her mouth, and a car crosses between us, the clean air is like polished bronze, and even though winter isn’t over, we still have a moment, just to breathe.