Morning in the City

(transcribed from paper journal)

It's 11 a.m. on Friday, and I'm sitting in Cafe Duke in SoHo with a hazelnut coffee and a poppyseed bagel with veggie cream cheese. Feeling a bit lost and lunatical after the morning trek from Chelsea. Luckily the weather is divine. Of course I wish it were more sunny, but I'm mostly glad it's not (a) raining (b) cold or (c) God forbid snowing. Snow's nice and all but not when I'm wandering around on foot. I mean, who am I? I know, I am weak, delicate, and lame.

"Chasing Cars" is playing in here, and it's playing in every store I enter, it seems. It was fun to get ready with Shelley this morning. It was like the old sleepover days. She went to work, and I walked down 7th Avenue to Greenwich and then through Washington Square Park and thought about when I was totally coming to NYU for grad school and how alarmed my mom and sister looked through our entire walk around the area. Lord! I don't regret not coming, but I do have to wonder what different paths I might have followed in life by living here, meeting people here, taking whatever chances and opportunities that would have been presented to me here. I guess in the Felicity scenario, I did not listen to Noel's impassioned plea, "Stay in New York or perish."

I stopped and looked at some of the Tiles for America, which was a neat display.

I bought some postcards, and after eventually getting to SoHo, I started feeling quite antsy and like I really needed coffee and a snack, and I almost wept when beholding Dean and Deluca as if it were bathed in heavenly light at Prince and Broadway only to realize that it's a giant (albeit awesome) grocery store Dean and Deluca with no tables for taking a load off with a cup of coffee in a chilled-out manner.

I regrouped and spotted Kate's Paperie, thank God, which is always a salvation haven, and I walked around in there and calmed down for a few minutes. Then I ended up at this nearby cafe. There wasn't any sort of real line at the breakfast counter, and I couldn't tell who'd been there before me, so person after person kept shoving forward to order while I just stood there clutching my messenger bag, and I finally worked up the nerve to order and possibly cut in front of someone. Thankfully, I ordered without incident. Now I must find the store whose name I can't ever remember at Broadway and Broome. Which makes me think of Bialystock and Bloom.