Fire escape

The strong, clear winter light on one of the rare sunny days makes an interesting abstract out of a fire escape on West 45th Street.

Welcome to the working week

A fruit vendor on 42nd Street.

Sunday reflections

Another of Grand Central, reflected in the Grand Hyatt.

Snow abstracts

The dregs of winter 2

The dregs of winter

You can't pretend that old snow is beautiful, but close up it is at least interesting. I didn't use the good camera so everything blurs a little when I blow it up, but it makes some lovely abstracts.

Saturday reflections

The Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building, across from Union Station in Washington, last October.

Egypt

I don't have anything intelligent to say about the situation in Egypt because I don't know enough. That doesn't seem to stop the bloviators on my TV, who are spouting the most incredible nonsense and then coming back the next day to spout nonsense that is the complete opposite of what they previously said. Is this good for us? Is this bad for us?

It's not about us. The few Egyptians I talked to during my brief visit hated Mubarak, and said so openly. "We're what passes for democracy in the Middle East," is how one of my tour guides put it bitterly. She was funny and smart and passionate, and got up at three in the morning in Cairo to drive to Alexandria to meet our tour group, escort us to Cairo and back, and then drive back to Cairo after midnight. In her eighth month of pregnancy. If the streets of Cairo are full of women as tough as she was, Mubarak is definitely toast.

There's a canal on the road to Giza, full of trash and discarded furniture and at least one dead donkey. I saw two young boys with a cart full of carrots washing them in the canal water. If tossing out the government gets children like that a source of clean water, it could be a very good thing. Or it could be Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Or something even worse. I don't know. Nobody does. But how they love to hear themselves talk!

Photo of the pyramid of Chephren, or Kafre, at Giza

I'm back

I've had no internet connection at home for the past couple of weeks, so no blogging. Not that there has been much I want to blog about. We've had snow. Followed by more snow. Followed by still more snow. And I've had a hard time finding anything charming or even interesting in the city the past few weeks.

But here's an abstract, above, water in the fountain in front of the Chase bank at Rockefeller Center, a little bit of glimmer amidst the gray.

Summer reflection

When I got back from Dublin, I was very happy to think that I wouldn't be going anywhere for months.

Now that the snow and slush of winter seems to have us in a permanent grip, getting out of New York for even a few days no longer seems like such an unpleasant idea.

In the meantime, here's a reflection from a courtyard in Copenhagen on a perfect day in June.

St-Malo 1985 (Travel Flashback)

In 1985 I lost my job, and spent my severance on a trip to France. I never really intended to go alone; I was planning six weeks travelling around France, followed by several days in London with family, and various friends planned to meet up with me for a week or two along the way.

One by one, they all dropped out, and I decided to go anyway, armed only with a French Rail pass and a copy of Let's Go France. I think I decided to go just because the idea scared me so much. I'm naturally shy, and though I spoke decent traveller's French, this was long before easy online reservations, and it took me several days to work up the courage to call the hotel in Paris that was my first stop and reserve a room in French. The rest of my hotel rooms would have to be found when I got there. I threw up from sheer panic several times on the flight over.

The first morning, I couldn't find the breakfast room; the only door I could see was marked private and though I could hear the clink of china behind it I was too shy to knock. Instead I went back to my room and cried. I cried a lot on that trip. Every town was a new challenge, finding a hotel, finding a grocery, finding a bank. Sometimes even a cafe was too intimidating and I had yogurt or an apple or half a roast chicken from a charcuterie for my dinner.

But I saw so much. I went to Lyon and Beaune and Annecy and Chamonix and Aixs-les-Bains and Angers and Mont St-Michel and Bayeux. If I liked a town I stayed an extra day; if I didn't I left the next morning. I met people. I had adventures.

Then I got the flu in Quimper, a bleak (at least in November) town at the far reaches of Bretagne, in a part of France called Finisterre. You would probably translate that as Land's End, but at the time I called it The Ends of the Earth. I was stuck for several days in a musty hotel, coughing, fever dreaming, and reading the only English books I could find near the hotel, which were two slim Ed McBains and Joan Collins's autobiography. Being sick and alone in a foreign country is terrifying, and more than once I thought about bailing on the rest of the trip and going to my uncle in London. And if getting to London had been easier, I might have done that.

Instead, the minute I felt strong enough, I took a train to St-Malo. It was raining, and cold and I was still sick, but I felt much better just being somewhere with more than one cafe. The next day the sun was out and I had that wonderful sense of resurrection you have when you've been really ill, and St-Malo seemed magical. I walked on the beaches and the ramparts and I was happy. Perfectly happy (despite my expression in that picture.)

The next morning when I came down for breakfast, the hotel bar, which had been deserted on Sunday, was packed with sailors and dockworkers, drinking and smoking and yelling across the room at each other. And it never even occurred to me to leave, or cry. I fought my way to a table and had my breakfast.

I've always considered this trip to be the best thing I've ever done for myself. I'm still too timid, and there are many times that holds me back, but I'm not afraid to travel by myself, and some of my best adventures have happened only because I was alone. I'm happy to have a companion, but I never wait for one to be available.

I'm going. Come along! And if you can't, I'm going anyway.

Saturday reflections

A nicely abstracted reflection from Washington.

I like the double reflection here: there's the large distortion up front, but there's also a second reflection of smaller windows. I'm not sure how that happens -- maybe double panes in the window?