Arnolfini cedars

On impulse this morning as I passed by I stepped into Saks Fifth Avenue, searched for the right perfume counter, and tried on Miss Dior. Hours later it's still lingering on my wrist. I can't say it filled me with a flood of Proustian associations but it did make me feel a little emotional. Exited Saks into teeming crowds. So much for romantic reverie. Lost patience with a cheesily overdressed, overmadeup couple that decided to stop right in the middle of the crowded sidewalk, oblivious to all others. Multitudes are there to glimpse the Rockefeller Center tree. What a good idea to stop right in the middle of hundreds and hundreds of people, I said. The guy sneerily yelled at me of course. Oh man. The city.

It was nice to try the perfume though. I haven't worn a fragrance in so long, it's almost a curiosity for me to try it. This fragrance is a little (or maybe a lot, now) young for me. And yet I'm enjoying it, it reminds me of talc. It's sweet. It goes with the pink tops I'm wearing today. With fierce brown denim, that is.

Such a beautiful day in the city today, like spring. Am killing time now at the Mid-Manhattan Library before heading to MOMA with my 3:30 ticket for the Tim Burton show. I am curious about someone who has such ceaseless generative energy. His needle is always placed on a record on a turntable, turning, turning, playing, creating. Hmmm, that metaphor isn't working, and yet I think about my own creative energy, all those walks around and around the conservation area, my blogging, my writing - I find that the more I write the more I want to write. Just keep going, circling, placing pen to paper.

Last night I stood in the kitchen and watched the two cedar deodoras we planted some 20 years ago dance in the high wind. These so-called "dwarf" cedars have now cleared the brownstone rooflines. They were so animated in the windy night. Their wide, sturdy lower branches intertwine all the way up, but at the top they're new and narrow. Individual longer branches are like arms, appearing to tirelessly, determinedly reach out for the other, a ceaseless dance, aided by the wind, to come together, to touch, to grab hold. I think that their desire to join must help to spur their lateral growth. The trees reminded me very much of the Arnolfini portrait, a mated pair, deeply in love and holding hands. I know they will succeed, take hold of one another as they have with lower branches, but I do wonder - how tall in the end will these trees, which are native to the Himalayas, get?