So to my happy surprise, I am starting to be glad to be in New York.  I spent this... I guess it is: Holiday weekend, and the day after in this allegedly festive town where I have been sullenly less than glad, running into some really nice people, some of them picked up in coffee shops which you can do here, and on the streets themselves where there were parades and races and quests for merriment.  Forgive me, Universe, for doubting.  I would not like to blame it on Donald Trump, but I could.
    In any and all events, I have beamed onto some really good spots, that carried on them some truly nice people, seen a good ballet, The Red Shoes, the stage adaptation, of my high school roommates obsession. It was not as engaging as my high school roommate, Lenny Landau, Leonara she was actually, who had a life in the theatre, semi-sort of, and with whom I reconnected for not long enough as I really liked her, and she was married to a creative man and lived in a town house, which seemed very creative to me.
      But the beautiful San Diegan I met in my coffee shop and I have definitely linked up, and it is joyful to make friends, something i hadn't really been doing much except for the people who work in my building.  This is a tough town if you're not going to the right places which seemed to be everywhere i wasn't.  But enough about loneliness. It does take a strong hold, and that pulls you into television and then you grow old.
     Am off to a concert now, something I did not often enough since coming here, walking as I've been with downcast eyes, shut ears, and weighted soul.  See you later, I hope.

So alas, I missed a day.  Two now.  May I come back this evening.

So when I got to the restaurant, late, which I didn’t mean to make intentional, it just takes longer to get someplace on foot than I remembered, or maybe the foot is just slower, it was closed.  Not permanently, just for the day, or maybe the Universe toying with my sense of attachment, imagining that things were supposed to work out, even though it was New York.  So I walked over to Lincoln Center, hoping to find/bumpinto them, sprawling though that setting is, wandered around, spoke to some kind people working windows where ‘No,’ there was no ticket for me, went over to the coffee shop where I saladed next to a kind couple from outside the city as many seem to be on a concert night, went to the ticket window, bought one for myself, when the woman of the couple came to the window and offered me a ticket as a child hadn’t shown up.  So I returned my bought ticket, to the annoyance of the woman in the window(No, not the movie of that name, if you are old enough to remember) and went inside and up to sit with my new, generous friends.   

      Concert great, I thought, though twas just the first half, met another wondrous couple, European, elderly as apparently I am, too, went back in and was impressed by the performance of Jeremy Irons as I always am, as he stays masterful and doesn’t age, especially from the good balcony. Afterwards went down where two aging Brooklyn women were arguing the spiritual applicability of the piece we had just heard.  I hadn’t judged it for God rules but just theatre.  Pretty good, I’d thought, but what do I know.  Then I’d wandered down, had a nice exchange with a young viola-ist, and ambled down the street and into a cab to go home, as I’m trying to make it.  Got to my door when I’d dug into my sleeve and not found my earmuffs, the fur accessory to my silver-fox trimmed jacket, all I have left of unnecessary luxury, having sent my ground-length red-dyed mink to a cleaners that has closed and disappeared, but hey, I was fearful of that ensemble anyway.  I can remember having worn it only once when Maman, who had given it to me told me “Wear it with nothing underneath, as you have no taste in clothes.”

    Now, fearful of having lost the earmuffs, having given away most of the many furs Maman had had and passed down, I taxied back to Lincoln Center, where the muffs weren’t on the ground, found a security guard who let me back into the center where I searched for my headpiece to no avail, took a taxi back to home, which I am still trying to make it, and no, no one had come to leave the earmuffs, went upstairs having resigned myself to the loss, trying to figure which earmuffs I might wear with it even though they weren’t a true matching accessory,  took my fox-fur trimmed cape off, and went to hang it in the closet, when all the way up on my shoulder I found the earmuffs.  Am I that old, or is my upper arm that insensitive?

    In any case, I regard it all as a Victory.  I have made new friends— I received an e-mail from the nice couple who’d invited me to concert and then the restaurant had been closed, and we hadn’t found each other, we shall meet again, my new wondrous buddy from Florida who feels like a contemporary from inside my eyes, my doorman seems always glad to see me, and it looks like Trump is on his way out, though it ain’t going to be easy. 

LOVE AND GRATEFUL KISSES.