9/18/09 - Get the Cool Shoeshine

The latina woman who shines shoes in the shop in the breezeway tunnel below Grand Central is asleep curled up in her chair with one cheek resting on her fist when I walk into the shop. The neon sign on the window says "Keys Made Shoe Repair" in glowing red, and a paper sign below that says "Holiday Special $2 Shine".

She awakens without embarrassment and motions me into the chair where she proceeds to enact a very practical ritual with a minimum of wasted motion - brushing and wiping and spraying and shining and spraying and buffing and snapping the cloth and buffing some more until the shoe glows blackly beneath the greenish flourescent lights.

I ascend the stairs and walk into the sunlit day beneath a blue sky, and my shoes feel like magic on my feet - cooler, better fitting, dancing their way down the street with me in them, pulling me along the sidewalk through the day.

6/27/09 - Blessings

The Highline Park is packed on this mostly-sunny, unsettled day, and we are surrounded by hundreds of people, but no one seems to notice as I get on one knee and open the box with the ring to ask the question I've been waiting to ask. After the obligatory calls to the parents there's pictures on cell phones sent to friends without explanation in hopes of blowing their minds.

As we run to the subway, the clouds that have been gathering over Jersey finally begin their assault on Manhattan, but when we come above ground in Brooklyn, the sun shines bright through the pouring rain. I look East, following the path of the storm, to see a rainbow bending across the sky, and I get the feeling that we have been blessed.

5/25/09 - Water Taxi Washing Machine

The Water Taxi to Ikea sails us out into Buttermilk Bay and around the industrial ports and loading docks of Red Hook. Katie and Kevin and I stand on the upper deck, beneath a glorious, beaming sun, and watch the light dapple off the water in glinting sheets. The wind blows my uncut-in-far-too-long hair and whips it into my face, until, irritated, I sit back down and watch two people I dearly love laugh and talk as they lean on the rail. Kevin and I have spent the day walking though the concrete and too bright streets of downtown, but the wind and the beauty of the day, the smell of water and salt from the sea just a few miles away, erases the city and leaves us clean and joyful and grateful to be alive.