Some walls, some windows.

So many things go on here when I am here--a first trip over the Brooklyn Bridge, in a taxi near midnight with all the lights of both boroughs blazing; a small child insisting that I lie down for a nap and let him keep nestling until he gets comfortable enough to recite everything on the ceiling with me; a concert for small people; bagels from the venerable H&H; excellent playground time--that I find myself too tired to write much. Somehow, when I visit the city, I see the things that people who don't live here come here expressly to see, but I always end up seeing them by going about my friends' daily lives, in all their routine and startlingly unroutine details. So: late last night, passing the World Financial Center, I realized that we were taking the West Side Highway right past Ground Zero, a site I had not visited since 2000. Similarly, the new Frank Gehry building going up on the west side, the one that got written up in the Times last weekend: "Hey, there's that Gehry," said my beloved Brooklynite from the back of our cab. Similarly, the Brooklyn Bridge: coming around the Battery and starting up the east side, I suddenly realized our route back to Brooklyn. These are moments of small off-kiltering wonder, as is every moment I feel a Q or B train rumbling along seven or eight stories below where I sit.

Tonight, I'll let these city scraps, some happy accidents from my past twenty-four hours, speak for themselves.