Great Day in the Morning

The ferry bobs violently on the surface of the East River before coming to rest against the pier.

The sun, glorious this morning, belies the bone chilling cold spell, courtesy of an arctic front that has descended over New York City and the East Coast. The sun is a tease but I avert my eyes, thankful the New York Waterway ferry, which I board in Hoboken, has the dirty Plexiglas windows, obscuring the sun further.

On the radio, somebody says the temperature is 11 degrees but that, with the wind, it feels like 10 below.

I ignore Lady Liberty. And the ache I usually feel at a view denuded of the Twin Towers, akin to the itch you feel like scratching where your limbs used to be, was absent this morning. I used to think them an abomination against nature. Until I started missing them when they were plucked clean out of the landscape. Such was my dread of the walk from Pier 11 to 125 Broad, at the southern tip of Manhattan.

The sun blazed but warmed nothing. The wind hits my face like a thousand needles. My eyes water. I don’t think about the crosswinds that will assault me shortly in the alleys.

I cocked my head so, lowered my shoulders, and, with a trot, pushed into the wind . . .