1/3/12 It's really cold, but only for some.

The night descends and the wind blows stinging cold against my cheeks. A woman and her daughter, dressed for the cold in bubble jackets and boots, and their wolfish, proud-tailed dog wander down the sidewalk ahead of me, and I listen as they urge the animal on.

"Come on, Charlie," says the woman, tugging at the leash, "or she'll get cold and tired."

"I'm not cold!" says the girl, and then begins to sing happily, "I'm not cold cold cold cold, I could stay out here all night!"

3-4-10 - late edition.

Last night, as I walked along Union Street, a dormer window high above the street was lit, and silhouetted in the bottom frame was a large dog. He was lit just enough by the street lamps and the ambient light of Brooklyn to see that he was white, and fluffy, with large, intelligent ears that turned before his head did while he watched the passers-by on the street below. I tried to take his picture, but the phone on my camera was insufficient to capture his curiosity, and since I was across the street, he was too far away anyway.

My mom called this assessment of the view out a window by animals "reading the newspaper" and that phrase always tickled me; just a big, white dog, reading the newspaper - late edition.

6/19/09 - I'll say it again: we're not that different

Probably drunk, possibly insane, definitely insane, definitely belligerent, wild-eyed, short and staggering man in baseball cap and t-shirt bellows at me across the street. Maybe at me, but regardless, he stalks the crosswalk, staring at the place where I'm standing, while I do my best intermediate submissive posture (body turned half-way, no eye contact, all this made easier by my iPod) until he is about a foot away and definitely "in my space". My aggressive ignoring seems to throw him off, and I leave him flat-footed when the light changes, cross the street and continue on my way, unmolsested, heart pounding.

A few blocks further on, a dog barks at a pair of other dogs across the street, and the sound is almost identical to the tiny belligerent man in short pants shouting in the distance behind me.

6/16/09 - Danke, Dirty Projectors

Tried (not very hard) to find the new Dirty Projectors album, Bitte Orca on a torrent, but finally gave up and just bought the damn thing on iTunes (only the second album I've ever purchased on iTunes, the first being Earl Greyhound's Soft Targets). The whole world seemed to provide a review of this strange, atonal, dissonantly beautiful music as I listened to it on my walk to the train this morning.

A small dog taking a shit finished up as I was walking by and trotted over to say hello to me, with a beatific smile on his little doggie face.

As I neared the station, a man walking a full pack of dogs paused to let a man pet them, while one of the dogs looked up into the sky, grinning, wagging his entire back-end.

5-8-08 Man's Best Friend

The beggar sitting in front of Key Foods lifts up his white Chinese take-out container over his head as the two dogs wander by, tails wagging, noses aflare at the wonderful smells this morning's rain has liberated. The wealthy looking (but slumming it: nice sweats, silver hair in a fashionable short, spikey cut) woman walking the dogs laughs at the man's discomfort, thinking he's in on the joke (oh, those wacky dogs, what're you gonna do?). As soon as she is away, his face, obsequious before, contorts as he mocks her clueless laughter. Yeah, it's just two dogs endearingly fucking around to her, but to him, that might be the only food he gets today, man.

1-13-08 Flea Market

In Katie's neighborhood on the weekends, the local elementary school playground is taken over by various vendors selling their wares: minerals and jewelry, old soviet memorabilia, vintage clothes, records, old books (comic and non), the odd fedora. We walk beneath a strangely slate sky in the early afternoon (having slept in half the day from a party the night before that went well into the morning hours), say hello to the puppies we meet, and wander through the market.

I'm standing examining a sliding door armoire that I have no intention of buying, but that smells deliciously of good, aged wood, and the vendor rushes up, asking us if we think the price is too high. I explain that it isn't a price problem, but just that I didn't come to buy, and he retreats, crestfallen, while we walk away, feeling slightly guilty on what must for some reason be a "slow day".