New York is a collage and I am in the middle of it

I would never say that NY is a city of bright colors. (Neither is Warsaw – let’s be truthful here.)
But during a holiday season all cities stray toward the pink and red and gold. Suddenly I have flashes of eternally beautiful brightness everywhere around me.

I was lured into taking a walk across town past all the top department store window displays. A NYorker will tell you that this is a big thing: lines form to check the Lord &Taylor or Saks windows. Add to it Bergdorf’s and Bloomingdale’s and you’ll have a nice quartet, displaying (often, but not always) quite the creative flights of fancy.

Window glare and sidewalks teeming with people make photography nearly impossible. But sometimes the glare-related double-imaging works to your advantage. Could it not be that Santa (courtesy of Saks) is navigating his sleigh in and around Rockefeller Plaza?

in the realm of the fantastic 

gold and glitter over a sea of people 

Lord & Taylor has the moving characters – playful, so playful; I especially like this one girl because she is holding that airplane with an exuberance and joy that is fitting for someone who associates planes with flights of imagination and adventure. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but she appears thrilled with her dreams and games…

up, up and away 

My closing shot is of the cursing chestnut guy who did NOT want me to shoot pictures. At least not after the first handful. Too many! He told me. Too many! Does he not know that it takes at least five bad ones to come up with one that is decent enough to post?

a lightbulb over chestnuts 

Choices

You’re in New York. You have 48 hours left in the city. The air is crisp, the skies are blue, the day is young. Anyone in his or her right mind would be on a subway zipping to some far corner of Manhattan to check out a gallery, or a place for brunch. Not me. I need to write something first. Insane? No, I have developed a blogger’s conscience.

New York can wait. Bright days are laughable anyway: they impose too much pressure on you to Take Full Advantage of them. I’ll wait ‘til the shadows settle in on the city. A comfortably oppressive darkness is far more consistent with what I expect from this place. In the meantime, the computer is open, the connection is good, I can read and write.

They're talking about her over in Britain

Ann Althouse and I began blogging about the same time (I beat her to it by a handful of days). We’ve each developed our own styles and we cling to our interests and slants sometimes with a fury. But I have said this before: Ann is a gracious blogger and she always shares in her tremendous success. While Ocean has remained small, almost flaunting its ridiculously expansive name, Althouse has grown and prospered (I don’t know if Ann herself has prospered yet, but her blog is bringing in readers by the thousands and so it’s only a matter of time, I’m sure, before you’ll see corporate giants vying for ad space in her margins). Today she is profiled over across the ocean, the real ocean. Here, I just want to add my own wee little congrats …and thanks. I’ll sign off with a photo of a corner of a MoMA painting.

finding the familiar in one small corner of a large canvas