Today the sun was shining strong above the roofs and through the streets and thick, white snow fell upward.

I lowered the shade beside my desk and returned my attention to the inviolable world of my desktop: Internet, e-mail. Word.

Tonight there was a noise outside my apartment door as of an aged imbecile in slippers, open-mouthed, pawing at the wall. Or of a drunken teenage couple just in from the cold, locked in their halting exertions, hands brushing nylon.

John and Jim and I returned from lunch down Greenwich Street today and I was under the impression we'd be swept straight off the island by a gust of wind. I suddenly felt myself susceptible to flying debris such as gargoyle fragments, billboard buttresses, windowsill pies, stoplights, wrought-iron window gates, hubcaps and wrecking balls swung free of their chains. I half imagined a parking sign cartwheeling up the sidewalk to plant itself in the center of my brain. Instead a fat man walked around the corner with his barely earthbound dog.