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2010-03-30 - 3:12 p.m.

So I just got back from New York. Was up there for three days. That city's all about cramming. The cramming-in of activities, of getting out of the hotel room, of coffee, of eating, of meeting up at 12th and third, 58th and ninth, and so on. At one end, when you've got somewhere specific to go, it's about crosshairs, zeroing in on a specific block. But if you've got nowhere to go, it's about perusing, about stopping at windows and saying, wow, that manequin's playing chess on a pretty cool chessboard.

It's an exhilirating place (I saw the main public library, the Met, The Strand bookstore, Rockefeller Center, a cut of Central Park in very early light-green spring-bloom, the cool part of Brooklyn, the insides of many subway cars, and, finally, a Prada store so insane I had to remind myself that its main function was to sell clothes and bags). I also paid $12.50 for a martini, and $9.00 for a bottle of pretty regular beer. It's a big place, in just about every way. I'm finding that I've read much, much more about New York than I've experienced, and so matching up experience with stuff I've read is a strange, exciting thing. I saw the famous Guggenheim facade, for example, and I thought: I've read three or four critical reviews of this fucker, and here it is. And then some kind of motorcade passed us, on Central Park West, and it must've been Obama or the mayor of New York or something. That's the kind of thing you read about happening in New York. As it turns out, that kind of thing does happen.

And so I'm back now and my city all of a sudden looks very tame, very quiet. Which is OK with me. I'll take manageable. I'll take familiar.

Also, this weekend, I checked my email from the hotel room and saw that a guy with a website about soccer had put up one of my essays. It's here.

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