It’s holiday in New York :)

And roundabouts...

It is subzero and freezing with the distinct premonition of a snow shower, public transportation timelessly delayed in a city where a third of the population relies on it, some piled up snow on the sidewalk, a huge line at Starbucks, I am walking back on my way home, and I am not complaining. There must be something very wrong.

Or very right.

Here at Walnut and 18th, across from the calm serenity of Rittenhouse Square Park complementing the hub of shopping and dining and stock-brokering and selling, where chariots move with no sense of time, pedestrians gawk, mindless of temperature, shoppers shop, unaware of the limits on their wallets, cars idle, oblivious of traffic lights, and people eat and drink and be merry, the many problems of life forgotten, it’s hard to complain.

The lights of City Hall look on from the distance, smug that they have helped spread the cheer, local musicians troll from a few miles away, so the winds could carry some holiday melody and dilute the chill, the smell of fresh baked bread mixes with that of winter before wafting through the air, to convince even the most melancholic that joy is all around..

And here in wintry-wet Philadelphia in December, right by a mound of packed and dirty snow, I raise a gloved hand to a well-insulated head, as the realization hits: overflowing trash cans and ankle-deep water puddles apart, I love the annoying discomfort of the North East. Reason why, far, far, away, amid the magnificent rockies, the wonderfully warm, sunny days, the clean and harmless powdery snow-flakes, the homes with central air and in-house laundry, the cars with protective heating and vast open spaces to park them in, not to mention narrower, cruder ones to hike and schlep up, I often dreamed of complicated Jersy-an jughandles and crowded Manhattan metros.

I love the long pea-coats that do all they can to fight the windchill, the buses that finally appear on the horizon, instigating a collective sigh of relief, the snow-boots that slip and slide over piles of debris and ice alike, trolleys with the latest movie poster stuck and re-stuck over archaic ones of a bygone era, graffiti on the shady side of a skyscraper recording the sort of poignant emotion that happens but once in one’s lifetime, interminable waits at the Post Office, endless lines at the supermarket and curt orders at the SEPTA ticket counter, bordering on un-Americanly rude...

Receiving that rude remark pays off though – pays off an hour and half later, cos when you get off at Madison Square Garden and the cold winds hit you just as hard as that pedestrian, and all you can feel is joy, you know where you are, for such vices are so easily excused only in the big apple...

Amid the sights and sounds and life and lights and people of New York, ironically enough, the most mundane thing happens in Times Square – lights fade, fireworks sparkle and a huge crystal ball drops, declaring that yet another year has begun...

Here is where it all happens, here is where I am going to be... I’m back by the Atlantic and I am not going to miss it for the world.

And while I go to bed thinking of the workload of tomorrow, one little part of my brain delights in the feeling of three weeks hence and spending New Year’s in New York...