I haven't written about my wonderful city much lately, primarily because I haven't really felt like one of its denizens lately. I've been inside on the outside. Away from parks and downtown and uptown and museums and all the other reasons I moved here. I think I've been indulging in the familiar, such as my neighborhood bars and restaurants and video stores. But last weekend and today threw me right back into New York City, face down on the pavement. I'm so giddy I'm seeing stars.

I took a weird tour last weekend, accidentally, and it made everything clear. Under the vaults of the Manhattan bridge. In the back of a movie theater foggy with pot smoke. Inside the narrow, left chamber of that pair of hideously over-decorated Indian restaurants on 1st Avenue, just below curry lane. I'd walked past these restaurants 100 thousand times before, watched the hosts pop out in perfect symmetry like wooden cuckoos, trying to pull left or right, as if it made any difference, every time someone dared to mount the steps. Maybe people see the christmas lights, hung thick like berries, and their senses give out. They're drawn upstairs. But the hosts take advantage of the daze