Oh, puppy. The puppy upstairs loves to play in exactly the spot that happens to be above my head. There are apparently no carpets in apartment 11C. And the puppy is not wearing any socks. It sounds as if... no it sounds like a crazy little dog chasing a ball on a much too polished floor. The park looked pretty incredible right around sunrise this morning. And the geese were celebrating their almost successful suicide mission. A gigantic flock was shouting at each other in the middle of the almost frozen lake. On the other side of the hill, the open air kennel had its meeting. Insane dogs and wild owners shouting names and whistling and clapping their hands. Saw several cardinals in trees just inches away from my head. They did not like the camera. I can not blame them. Would i like to have a box the size of my body held up to me awkwardly for an insanely long period of time? Not much is automatic about my camera, and I do not shoot every day. I was dressed warmly enough to make it to Gros Morne. Today I made it to almost the northern edge of prospect park. The bus took me back to the corner here. It is a holiday. I should have been helping the community, not just bumbling around in the snow. The puppy is done with his game of fetch. Is it really not even 7PM?

washing lemon trees with sake vinegar. burning plum incense now. two sticks. one held by the pewter bunny amy gave me for christmas perhaps two years ago, the other sticking out of a pile of the glazed tiles that came with this particular brand of short sticks. trying to cover the smell of sake vinegar. it was not the right kind of vinegar, i guess. much too fragrant for the job. but i did not want to leave the house to buy vinegar. and maybe vinegar is the wrong thing to use anyway. it does make sense somehow though. a cure i came up with myself, again over a year ago, when the lime tree was starting to die because of some bug infestation. perhaps the dead leaves on the smallest of my lemon trees was just a smart way to avoid the webbing bugs. the smallest one got it. it is in the window though, in the sun. there was not enough room in the sun for the little forest. the little forest is five little trees. all about four years old now maybe? all grown from pits found in lemons bought so i could avoid vinegar in the salad. and the vinegar felt like a cure. and i had to do the work outside. in sweater and jacket, with a pair of scissors. cutting off all the leaves. there were over a hundred, i think. some were very sticky from the liquid they released to get rid of the intruders. i gathered them and added them to the compost bucket. they will be gone around this time next year. after all the leaves were removed, i poured some of the sake vinegar into an old plastic container and with a napkin washed the little trees. they are twigs really, thin lemon tree twigs, and yet pretty mighty looking in their flat wooden container. i removed some of the younger ones completely. two in the back had already died. so yes, it was more than five. there are five larger ones. how had i not noticed earlier that there was a problem? i had not been paying attention to this particular set of trees. they were in the shadow, there were not enough clues for them that summer would return, and so they weakened. i hope that at least some of them manage to return to their senses. now that the little pests are removed, they should. i hope it is not too early into the short winter days. i hope they will make it. the trees look very handsome without their leaves. perhaps the procedure will make them age, just as it would age many other trees with leaves. there is an interdependence between the absence of leaves and winter. i hope it all works out. the smell of the sake vinegar is too strong. so now the fig incense is burning. it is better already. and the eucalyptus leaves i crushed earlier in the day now cover the ground for one of the young blueberry bushes. perhaps so the cold does not appear so severe to the young shrub. though it might be good for it to appear cold... i am not sure. trees are the expression of their surroundings. and surroundings are shaped by their trees. the proper cutting of a tree might look like torture, yet it might actually be good to the plant. there are other factors that matter very much. hmm...

driving home after a sad yet beautiful day we took the car back to the city with the many men who somehow deposited their stories into the one guy at the wheel. the drive was about 60 minutes, but the stories spanned several lifetimes. there were people jumping off cliffs and buildings, there was french and italian cooking, some of it for hundreds of people. there were children born to many mothers. and there was a good layer of bitterness. and whenever it became too thick, the music would be turned up and any thinking could be blasted away by the smoky voice of rod stewart. the navigation system with the adjusted, seductive voice seemed to not know the way, until it became clear that it had been programmed to get lost. i think we managed to pass through all boroughs. no, we did not get to staten island. the car would go there after dropping us off. i cried when the story of the pear tree was read earlier in the day. we were in a funeral home, staring at an empty container, two boards with lovingly assembled pictures, a priest who explained who can understand the snoring of chickens, as well as a concrete wall, lit, hidden behind many edward durell stone tiles. and i did not know the english words for the prayers, so my lips were just saying them all in german, even though it is not my first language either. i remembered the smell of the priest and the two altar boys who would come to bless our apartment, or my grandmother's apartment. chickens do snore, apparently. and pear trees can not be judged by their look in one season. nothing should be. it was a sad and beautiful day. and many of the stories were probably pulled out of some old smoke.

13! 13 years in New York today. Soon this will be the place where I spent most of my life.