The Waste Land of Area X

 More on London later.  For now, here are two images for the Dante fans out there (and you know you're out there...)

This is the "Area X" that has sprung up in Port Authority since the Storm, to allow for all the extra people taking the bus to the 'boken while the Path is out of commission.  What does it have to do with Dante?  There's a big ol' hint in the title of this post.

It's the Little Things

Sometimes the details just line up and mean more than the sum of their parts. Today I had a friendlier-than-usual exchange with a fellow bus passenger, and I was having one of those Good Commute Tunes days (mostly indie rock, with more Sinatra than chance would seem to demand). But it was a cloudy damp day, and my head was aching dully, so it wasn't exactly an ideal morning.

Then I had one of those moments that's hard to describe. After a note-perfect Guided by Voices song, and a Sinatra tune I actually bumped forward about halfway through, I got the beautiful, plaintive 'Raincloud' by Leah Siegel. Had me in a nice place, and then just as she sang '...the way you feel the sun crashing down on the horizon' the sun broke through the clouds and cast a light that was, let's not be overly dramatic and call it 'miraculous,' but it was stunning. And it drew my attention to one of those buildings that I've surely passed dozens (hundreds?) of times but never really noticed - one of countless structures in New York which have a singular beauty but which all too often blend into undeserved obscurity because of the simple volume of Big Buildings on this island.

But not today. Today, as Leah's guitars made the case for love, I took in the levels of this building, noticed how the details catch the light, saw where arched windows had been bricked over, caught a sign that has probably been hanging in a window for 30 years or more.

Don't have a photo to share with you guys about it, but I wanted to recognize the moment.

And in other news, it's Free Iced Coffee Day at Dunkin Donuts.

steady diet of jazz

Kind of rough going this morning. Last night's storm turned into today's urban steambath. Crowds getting antsy, sweat dripping from everything, trains not feeling cooperative, and their air conditioning even less so. These pipes beneath our city seem to be wearing out, or is it my imagination?



Yesterday was a bit of a roller coaster emotionally, topped off with happy hour with j.p. followed by a trip to the gym against all odds. What, you say it's maybe not smart to go work out on a hot night after you've had a couple beers? Pshaw. It's good for ya.



So this morning, the sitch kind of blew. Thankful for some kind people, fellow travellers who don't mind commiserating along the way.



And once again, music to the rescue. Jazz cooled me off as the steam built up around me. In random mode but nudged along by the skip-ahead button, ye olde mp3 hooked me up with -



dave brubeck, lush piano falling into sweet synchopated counterpoint with the band



mellow coltrane, letting some spirit in



jimmy smith, gettin' messy southern-style, let me revel in it for a while



frank sinatra, bringin' it all back home to hoboken



and sarah vaughan swinging some bernstein/sondheim, word mixups and all (who wouldn't mix up some words on a morning like this?

And of course, when you think you're having a bad commute, you may want to remember Minneapolis...