Sylvia Plath's New York

For those of you, like me, who have read Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar more than two times, you may recall how she describes New York City in the very early morning before anyone is out of bed. She writes that before the streets fill up with people and cars the smells of nature from New Jersey waft across the Hudson and fill up the concrete canyons. She describes it, obviously, in her words and to much greater effect.

I finished dinner at 10:30 with a very old friend of mine who lives on Broadway and 99th Street and I decided to walk a bit before getting in the humid hell tube of the 1 train. When I arrived at 89th Street, there was a serious stench of skunk. It actually smelled like a skunk had gotten loose and sprayed the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Was it from New Jersey? Or was it just the off-gassing smell of the brand new purple industrial carpet gleaming from the store front in front of me? No matter, it reeked of true skunk and I thought of Sylvia.

Natural experiences are so important. No matter what side of the river you live upon.

We experienced big thunder storms today. I remember as a child these storms used to clear the air and reduce the humidity. After these storms today the sticky mess still does not abate. Now, one no longer has to imagine what it must be like to live among the inner drippings of the sloughing uterus of a feverish ring-tailed monkey that lives at the equator.