Sitting in this rather arty apartment in downtown Brooklyn. The wind from the river whistling  tunelessly past the brownstone houses and the recently-risen dazzling glass-fronted edifices sharing this over-crowded parcel of the Big Apple. Across the Hudson Manhattan looms large; the great caverns of 5th Avenue, 7th Avenue,42nd Street, et al not visible from my lowly standpoint.

I am reading  – or rather re-reading Kerouac’s On The Road – and after over thirty years absence it reads like something brand new. I don’t think I appreciated way back then how great a book it is. Kerouac talks endlessly about this shadowy character Dean Moriarty as he travels across the Great Plains of America. Maybe Moriarty is himself, who knows?

Yesterday I saw the metropolitan sprawl that is NY from the top of the Empire State  Building- 102 floors up ! – and what a sprawl it is!  A view from Central Parks which reeks of old money, all the way down to Wall Street where the new money burns holes in many pockets! And in between such varied sights as TImes SQuare, the  Chrysler Building, the Museum of Modern Art, St Patrick’s Cathedral, and so on. They say if you’re tired of NY you’re tired of living. I am sure it is true!