make it here, make it anywhere, but it's always better here!

we are in the midst of our ten day new york city reading tour extravaganza. tonight Denise reads at the new school at 6:30pm rm 510 @ 66 w 13th st. and at 4:30pm i'm off to pay a visit to Scotty's (Scott Hightower) nyu poetry class to talk about my books and my poems. scott is a sweety and one of the city's guiding poetry stalwarts. we go way back to his days when he curated the world coffee shop readings at union square. his latest book is the amazing hayden carruth prize winner from copper canyon press, Part of the Bargain (2005) which has a picture of a cowboy on the cover. it is nice to walk our old neighborhood, refamiliarize ourselves with the buildings and the shadows they cast in early winter. nice to see that the DKNY sign on houston & broadway is still there. that's the same sign that shows up in my second poem in my second poetry book Secret Asian Man (2000).

our typical day was like sunday when we woke up late and walked to the dinner on west 4th next to the golden swan park. after breakfast we walked across to the IFC movie theater and got in line to see Felicity Huffman in her oscar winning role (prediction but very sure) in the tour-de-force film Transamerica. if you love movies, go out and see this one! after the movie we walked over to sharyn wolf's brownstone apt where she was having a jewelry sale. sharyn is denise's longtime friend and she's a famous author and therapist who's a frequent guest on oprah, and now she's making fine artistic quality jewelry. after some wine, fine cheese, and talk of precious stones, we walked up to 23rd st where we visited scotty & jose's luxurious two-level roof top apartment which has a spectacular view of the new chelsea.

from chelsea we walked over to the N train to queens where we went to visit amy lemmon and her two lovely children. amy then led us to a local greek restaurant where we ate some great sea food. we got back to washington sq park where our hotel is located by 1am. everything was quiet and there was a light snowfall as we passed the big white arch. there were multi-patterned lanterns covering the park lamp post lights giving the park a christmas touch. very new york and romantic, indeed!