The New York Public Library main building, the one where people will go to burn books with Jake Gyllenhaal when the Mayan snowpocalypse happens this December, isn't actually a lending library - it's all reference, as in, you fill out a card with information about the item you want and a little mole person runs around the seven floors of stacks below you to procure your request and you read it in a reading room and then hand it back over. You will not walk out holding a book in your hand unless you buy it in the gift shop. Or are very brazen/stupid.


The tour we took wasn't particularly great - the docent had to holler to be heard over the din created by the cavernous space and there wasn't as much emphasis on the design and construction of the building as I would have liked. But it was a free tour of a library, so these complaints are silly. My favorite part was when she explained to the group what using a card catalog was like. It didn't make me feel old; it made me happy to be in the future, where I could Instagram a dirty-looking digital photo and then Yelp a vegan Korean tea cafe where Juju could have fake duck bibimbap.

Taking pictures made me think of Northern California, what with the expanse of space and light play; it's been almost three years since I left and I still feel fiercely possessive of the golden bristly hills and singular sunlight there. My current project at work has me interacting with the San Francisco office and sometimes I get very snippy about how much I'd like to be sent out to work there for a while and then when my snippiness does not accomplish anything I threaten to simply fly out there on my own because oh, my God, I would like a vegan lavash. And a salad from Mixt and some Ike's and Muracci's and a bowl of corn and crab chowder from that place on the corner. And also a coastal hike or two, and the opportunity to huff some cypress and eucalyptus trees, and sure I'd make a little internet. But mostly I would eat.

And with that thought, I realize I should probably have something for lunch other than carrots and almonds.

Sometimes you find an artist whose style strikes you so viscerally that when you find a friend who also appreciates them in any measure you sort of are forced to latch on to them in what may be an annoying manner. Friend A, I am sorry about the Wilco latching-on, and Friend B, I'm sorry about the Choire Sicha latching-on, but Mr. Sicha once wrote a searing snippet for The Awl about a new zealous Brooklyn parent that has stayed with me, and I think about it pretty often when I look at the sugar maple outside my window. My sugar maple! My sugar maple seems to be sprouting seeds so much earlier than last year but Googling "sugar maple growth rate" leads me to believe that what with its height being about 75 feet (the maximum height of a residential zone R8-B building in Manhattan) it should be around 75 years old, which is pretty mature, and so maybe it knows what it's doing! I still worry. What if something is wrong with my sugar maple? My sugar maple!

My cousin's daughter's Surfing Sue, a traveling doll posted to the East Coast for photography with various memorials, is too flimsy in the Battery Park bluster and I end up asking an accented lady to hold her up, like a plastered bachelorette, in front of the Statue of Liberty. It's still too far and indistinguishable from a crane or tall tree across the bay, but the distance I'd have to back up to get a suitable depth of field is more weirdness than I want to inflict on my foreign accomplice. If this were to become a routine of any sort Sue would need a sturdy backing. And maybe a stand. Neither of these things are happening today.

The Whitehall R station is labyrinthine and low-ceilinged, and despite the fact that I'm absolutely aware of arriving at the Prince Street station from downtown instead of uptown it's still jarring to see Dean and DeLuca, on the east side of Broadway, when I exit.

I don't really have the right to be this excited about the warm weather coming; as Dad pointed out to me over the phone while I was walking through the park yesterday - bare ankles and scarf unwound - on average this past winter, at least in upper east Tennessee, has been eight degrees warmer than usual. I think I wore the puffy coat once. Did temperatures ever even get into the teens? Is it blasphemous to say that if this is global warming I'll take it?

Because of my propensity to imagine the worst I generally think of March as an unforgiving month, and so seeing the first sprinkles of cherry blossoms on someone's ornamental rooftop tree out my window right now is weird. Grendel can tell what's up and is clawing at the door more often. Allowing exploration of the flophouse would only incite him further, so it's new toys and a deluge of treats.

After getting food in Chelsea yesterday, maybe around 20th, I said goodbye to my brunching partners and began walking uptown on 8th. I did this last year after a drink too many at the Frying Pan, starting idly up 9th and at a certain point recognizing that I'd decided to walk home. It's not even three miles. I didn't make it through the forties on 8th, though, because it's an irritating gauntlet of electronic shops, tiny sports bars, and $39 shoe stores. The waves of doughy-faced uninteresting people wearing green sequined masks and four-leaf-clover deely-bobbers didn't help. At one point a girl with green false eyelashes spat at my sneakers and it was only a quick and graceless hopping-back maneuver that saved them. I didn't even say anything; if someone is drunk enough to spit on your shoes at 3pm, your opinion on this situation is almost certainly useless.

Not long after that I gave up and went back to 9th, which seems vibrant and liveable, if slightly lacking in character, through the 40s and 50s. I tried, 8th Avenue - let me know when you get your act together. Central Park starts at 59th so I crossed over there and as soon as I passed by the golden USS Maine Monument I could smell the hint of warm green things, which is a fantastic smell. I could also smell mulching manure so pungent my nose twitched, a slightly less fantastic smell but almost as comforting because SPRING!