Put down the remote, New York, let's go out.

I have not fallen out of love with New York and my life here at all, but I guess we entered a natural comfort phase that comes with time: New York leaves the toilet seat up, I have yesterday's newspaper still on the coffee table. The last flowers I gave New York are set aside to be pressed into a book, but haven't been. That sort of thing. But we still use our pet names ("Big Hunk of a City" and "Niblet") on each other so I guess that is good.

I know every day is not supposed to be a back lot musical, but I just didn't want to be in the "went to work, came home, went to sleep, went to work" mode yet. It takes work to not fall into this. Life is indeed too short for one of those scenarios to be the last day. So magic must be either found, or better yet, noticed.

So today I put on my i-pod, my new attitude and my winter coat and headed out. I had completed all the errands that were necessary and allowed the rest of the day to be an adventure. As I walked down Broadway on the Upper Westside I saw Frances McDormand walking up the street carrying a brand new mop. Here I pause because my love for New York swelled. Here is an Oscar winner (FARGO) walking up the street without any cameras rolling playing the roll of her lifetime, herself, carrying a mop with the plastic still around the top of it to hold all those cotton tentacles in place. I love that. NEVER would you see that in Hollywood. There would have been mascara and a BMW involved in the purchase of that mop. Or an assistant would have purchased it. People here climb stairs and step over things. I guess I dig that.

I made my way through Central Park, past the statues of famous literary figures, by the Plaza Hotel and Bergdorf Goodman's. In front of me were, seriously, over 100 cop cars lining 5th Avenue and then along 57th Street. All perpendiculaly parked like it was Main Street in Monrovia. I asked one of the policemen what was going on and he told me it was a "terrorism exercise." Like an egg balanced on a roof, I can't decide which way on the "comforting scale" that fell for me. All I know is that the rest of the city was unsafe as hell at that very moment since New York's Finest were all there.

My master plan was to see if my employee ID card would get me into MOMA for free. (This mission is what I call "Scottish Culture." And I am all about it.) It worked like a charm and here I was on a grey day surrounded by some of the most famous art in the world. Much as I think of Eloise at the Plaza, I always think of spies trading secrets at MOMA or affairs initiating in the Picasso room. What a great place to drop one's glove with either a foreign secret or your phone number in it. Clearly I am single because I spend too much time thinking about these things.

(And not dropping gloves.)

People passing secrets.

After being on my feet all day, I sat down behind a man who had removed those grommets or whatever from his earlobes. I tried to see the world through the holes in his ears. I saw a lot.