This afternoon Paul spent about an hour trying to find three Amy Hempel stories he wanted to use with his class at NYU, and once he'd dug them out of his files in the closet he went out and photocopied them. Then we went up to Lincoln Plaza to see Milk,but the next three shows were sold out, so we went across the street to a coffee shop, and who was just about to step out of a drugstore onto Broadway but -- Amy Hempel. I love Amy, and it was great to catch up a little, even in the chilly hustle out on the sidewalk. This seems an example of the invisible strings binding elements of the universe together; Paul is concentrating on Amy Hempel's stories, and then there she is, she whom we run into -- every three years?
Then we walked across the lower half of the Park, and down Fifth to look at shop windows. The little shadowbox windows at Bergdorf's are incredible, like surrealist dreams, and the big splashy ones are startling too; see the fashionable Max Ernst-style birdwoman above. Then the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, which isn't lit yet, and then Bryant Park, which has suddenly filled with this village of small metal and glass buildings, like greenhouses, each containing a little shop full of colorful things you would never want, and there's a skating rink called The Pond where the tents sit for Fashion Week. The Pond, it seems, is brought to you by Citigroup. Hmm, didn't we just give them 300 billion dollars? The Pond probably did cost a pretty penny,
2 comments:
It's nice to get something tangible as a skating pond for our collective investment in helping Citi survive.
It's fascinating when the universe demonstrates some odd proclivity for orchestration . . . and now, here's Amy Hempel!
I wonder how a chap like Richard Dawkins would respond to such serendipity . . . random chance, probably. But you have to wonder if there isn't some quantum magic at play.
I discovered Amy Hempel this year when I bought her Collected Stories. She's a superb writer.
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