Folks shovel the snow away from the parts of the sidewalks in front of their building or stores. At the corners of the streets the snow accumulates creating valleys of brownish waters between white mountains. People jump around to avoid them. Leashed dogs skid and never lose balance. In Chelsea, Avenue 6 there's almost nobody around, the small Starbucks almost empty and silent. Later a little more to the south east, there are the banners, and I guess I'm wearing my green sweater for st. Patrick today, although the only Irish I'm familiar with is James Joyce and it's not like he wanted to be considered Irish anyway.

I am so not prepared for this kind of weather. My shoes are not water proof, instead they are soak wet, my burgundy jacket not even seriously protective. When the wind blows I lose contact with my ears.
But I love the steam coming out of my mouth, the cold in my hair still wet from the shower. I know all the basic sensations, walking on the hard snow, the too warm insides, the smell of the subway, the long coffees, the endless coffees sipped in the soft music of the Starbucks, with all those silly misused italian words.

Last time I was in the city it was easy to be under the illusion of being a part of it, of being just another citizen, in spite of not having anything to do there. It's odd, or maybe not, how this time it's not so easy.
My obvious not belonging here. My not being one of them. My not having the financial and emotional means to be one of them. See, there, I wish I was one of those folks shoveling the snow from the sidewalks, scattering grains of salt on the frozen parts, just to know how it feels. I'd be singing some song and someone would smile at me as they walk by.

So I bring with me my not having a purpose. Hands in pockets, a silly smile on my face, always there, telling what I am, a spectator of the most trivial things, and all the other things, unreal only because I am unreal.

Once again I think of that phrase from the Nicolas Born's novel I am reading, The Deception . Well, I forgot it in Milan, together with the stupid cable to download the pictures from my camera (shit), so I quote from memory: Ends and Goals are never so important as Means.
Whether you're waging a war, or helping someone, or just going on with your life. What really count are the ways you're adopting. The real truth is that the machiavellan logic should always be reversed. So it doesn't count why you are at war or at peace or at love, it counts how you behave to get there. And if your ways are sick, or rotten or phony, then even your best aims aren't any good, and what you're doing isn't any good.
I don't think this forgives me for feeling so aimless, still aimless, after all these years. Does it? Even ashamed of having come all this way to feel like this, on my first day, and also, not really caring: and still feeling good and not caring. I wonder what's wrong with me.

-- In picture, above: saturday morning, "except sun"