Insomniac City

Now, shall we have something to drink? Coffee or vodka? Those are the only two things I know how to make.

The other day, I was on a local 6 going uptown and seated next to a young woman with a baby in a stroller. At each stop, a man (always a man) would enter the car and end up standing right above us. I had my iPod on and was just watching. Inevitably, each man would make goofy faces and smile at the baby, and the baby would smile and make faces back. At each stop, the standing man would be replaced by a new one, straight out of central casting: First, an older Latin guy. Then he gets off and a young black man appears. Then a white man in a suit. Then a construction worker with a hard hat. Tough guys. New York guys. All devoted to one important task: making a baby smile.

I cannot take a subway without marveling at the lottery logic that brings together a random sampling of humanity for one minute or two, testing us for kindness and compatibility. Is that not what civility is?

used to think that the only thing worse than having insomnia was having insomnia next to someone who falls fast asleep and stays soundlessly so till morning.

Sometimes I’d sit in the kitchen in the dark and gaze out at the Empire State and Chrysler buildings. Such a beautiful pair, so impeccably dressed, he in his boxy suit, every night a different hue, and she, an arm’s length away, in her filigreed skirt the color of the moon. I regarded them as an old married couple, calmly, unblinkingly keeping watch over one of their newest sons. And I returned the favor; I would be there the moment the Empire State turned off its lights for the night as if to get

To be a New Yorker is to be away from the city and feel like you are missing something,

Now, the pain was setting in, darkness falling. But where he’d been before—behind that fence, where boys live in the air? There’s no pain there, nothing’s broken.

O: “Are you conscious of your thoughts before language embodies them?”

The thing is, beauty comes in unbeautiful ways here.

Pleasure, even if it’s not dependent on an object, involves the senses—is sensuous. Pleasure can bring happiness, but happiness doesn’t necessarily give one pleasure.