Daily Blague

Incredible as it still seems to me, I got dressed right after breakfast and walked over to Central Park. This ought to be a perfectly ordinary sort of outing, and perhaps it will become one. I made my way purposefully to the edge of the Great Lawn to take the snap above, for until then I wasn't quite sure that the snow made much of a difference. Well, such snow as remained. The roads and paths were all dark and slushy, and there were plenty of people, too, although nothing like last weekend's crowd. The thick cloud cover worked to the color's advantage: this time, I could see some merit in the claim that it is "saffron." Where the panels were thickly planted, they seemed to draw a glow from one another; we probably carry a deeply-wired neural association that causes orange to signal sources of light. In any case, the gates seen across the white expanse of the Great Lawn looked much better.

The panels had held up to a week of the great New York outdoors very well. Nevertheless, it's good that they'll be gone shortly. It's hard to say hello and goodbye at the same time - doubtless the reason why we always promise to reconnect with strangers met by chance on journeys. Last week, everyone was saying "hello" to The Gates. Today, I said "goodbye." I almost missed them.