Seeing and Believing

The skyline plays hide and seek with me these past number of years from my bedroom window. The window itself is large, a good 4-5 feet in height. New York disappears from time to time in rain clouds or snow— when it does I feel a phantom pain; it's like losing a limb. Startling and terrifying. Tonight, though, having come in from a brisk night, I know why I can't see the Empire State or Woolworth Building, the anonymous multi-lit windows of skyscrapers downtown or even the near-but-far semi-skyrises of Brooklyn: They are blurred beneath a dense snowfall—small flakes, icier than the last loosely falling aqueous snow, tighter and less dreamy, but no less enchanting somehow. Just when the world is feeling bounded, the night is lit by bug-like white lights and a man from Fez who serves up a salty yellow and orange, warm and thick egg and cheese sandwich. Hey, it don't get much better than this, she says.

It is Philip Glass' birthday. And, I believe, Schubert's.

A piano plays through a transmitted wave, and the air thus vibrates. Sleep well.