Here I have been in New York for five weeks. Today it's raining. In Minnesota it doesn't rain in February. Here the women walk by wearing black boots to the knee. For weeks, I shopped stores in Minnesota looking for the perfect tall boot. I found them, but it took effort. I looked out the window there and saw evergreens and birdfeeders and the cat. I look out the window here on E. 10th St., and it's as good as looking at the pages of a fashion magazine. There are, many of them, NYU students. The women's legs are pencil-thin! The dogs are family members. The taxis whisk by, as today, kicking up rain behind their tires.
Yesterday we heard from "the Doctor," our name for our good friend, Marty, in Denver. I hadn't talked to Marty in more than ten years, but once we were on the telephone, it was like today that yesterday was. He has married and has a beautiful little boy. We expressed mutual happiness for one another. We carried on a three-way phone call with T. Marty is happy to be teaching and to be a dad. I am happy because my depression, suffered years ago, following our experience in Houston, has abated. The absence of depression is, like happiness, palpable. We read poetry out loud and a scene from a new play Marty has written. Marty called T. the "new Ashbery." We praised each other lavishly and justly and noted still missing Houston after all this time.
Tomorrow I'll go to the AWP bookfair & then join AQ & Robin for supper. I can almost not wait!
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