The New Year, New York

I like walking west on the wide streets towards my 1 train. Maybe 14th or 23rd, if it is late enough to begin to be deserted but not yet be terrifyingly empty. I like to feel myself at all sides isolated, by windy wide streets. On a night like tonight, it's a solid cold squaring off against my back, each side of me, my face. It's the physical equivalent of successfully overcoming writer's block, the blank page here being the sustained silence deep inside. I walk in it, and that walk--the cadence of my heels on the empty pavement, the shifting shoulders caving into my frame to keep me warm, the hair blowing however it wants, the way I think my face looks to everyone it passes (how does it look?)--that walk becomes the story telling itself to me.