The woman tells the story of her father teaching her to swim, his hands supporting her in the water, the important lesson of learning to float because floating will save you if you are imperiled. I try to imagine a father's hands on my waist, a weightlessness, and I do, I can, but it is not imagining it is memory. Of my father lifting me up, up but we are not in water, we are on the roof of our high rise building, and now he is holding me over the edge too far too far and I do not know what madness, what lesson he is trying to impart with my life balancing on his hands, on this parapet.

This memory sours my day. Someone has vomited on the sidewalk, and covered their shame with a newspaper. Beyond the rectangle of paper is the splatter of forceful sickness and a light rain has fixed the whole mess fast.

The women line up for a photograph I see suddenly, in their careful dress and styling, everything they are trying to hide: a thick waist, short legs, oddly set breasts, an overall lack of grace. They angle their faces towards the camera, expectant, and I would like to see a natural heliotrophism but I realize that here too is the result of hours of examination and camoflauge, the heads held just so, the approach to the lens so exact as to hide puffy undereyes, a jawline gone blurry with fat, a weak chin, an unlovliness.

Walking to the subway after work I take photograph after photograph, trying to frame what I see, trying to find balance in the rust and thievery, the hustle and garbage, the slums and disdain.

A long late afternoon run means I am running down the sun. The clouds that started out as huge white ocean liners drifting turn dark bellied and unhappy. The gleaming limestone of the court building with its shockingly green counterpoint of verdigris balustrades washes out and ceases to sparkle as the sun drops below downtown skyscrapers. Planes lowering on final descent into La Guardia fizzle silver as the light lowers in perpendicular trajectory. The minute hands on the clock tower revolve, the hour hands tick forward, and the lights that pick them out prick on fuzzy in a humid dusk. And now I am done running and it is time to go home.

It's strange to see New Yorkers unencumbered, with no shopping bags, purses, messenger bags, groceries we are always schlepping. So he already gets my notice for having nothing in his hands.

During this heat wave he is doing what I recognize from growing up down south. He has waited for the sun to go down, for the coolness of the night, to go for a run. Standing at the light, waiting for it to turn, in contrast to all the young people dressed for a night in the East Village, a night of drinking, flirting, gabbing, he is wearing practically nothing. Only tiny shorts and a pair of sneakers

And tattoos. A deck of cards over his heart, a pair of swallows diving down the smooth hills of his hipbones. As he runs past I know I have seen him before, he has a pair of wings inked to his back, making him a swooping angel, sweat slicked, sleek, traversing the intersection, then gone.

I am watching the sparrows on the barbed wire in the back of the house. They are plain little birds, but I am happy to see them. When all the trees in the back were cut down in Phase I of destructo garden mode I was afraid I wouldn't get any more avian visitors, but here they are, peeping and hopping between strands of angry metal and the broken glass set into the top of the cinder block wall.

Phase II, the jackhammering of the concrete slab is completed, and now begins Phase III the most arduous and irritating stage of sacking all the rubble and carting it out. Rains this weekend, and needing to conserve strenght for running 11 miles, prohibit continuance. But it is far enough along that I dare to dream of planting some things this fall for spring time joy.

The alpine strawberries have been a consistant delight. They would have preferred that I did not strand them on the high stoop in full blasting sun when it is over 90 degrees out, but if I thought their bounty was over for the summer, they have proven me wrong with a new crop of blossoms this week. Their little white petals and tiny yellow faces are so happy-making as I leave for work in the morning. (one might understand how vital this is if one ever visited the neighborhood I work in. It got a write up in the NYT today for how bad it smells. And it was entirely understated.)

He said "You are beautiful, I wish I had a camera."
I handed him my camera phone.

Last night was a six mile run, a visit to the Monday night pool league, sashimi dinner which has never tasted so good, and not just a Brush with Fame but a First Name Introduction to Fame.

Most delicious: the cab ride home. Slicing through the dark city, cool air, and Gillian Welch crooning in my ears "One monkey don't stop the show, one monkey don't stop the show, one monkey don't stop the show..."

I wake alone in my clean white bed, hands shaking just a little. I think of beds I am not in, lives I am no longer welcome to share. I wonder when my toothbrush was thrown out. When my emails were erased. When my phone number was deleted. When was I erased, when did I cease to matter. There are men sleeping in rooms in this city, and I know what they look like, I know their walls, their sheets, their night mutterings, and if I could say just one thing it would be I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry.

Work is a little intense these days.

You are 47 years old, so when you finally find a good man with a steady job, you are extra grateful. Yeah, he's a little mopey, a little dark, but those stalking charges are from that bitch of an ex who is just jealous of how happy you are together. And when you get the diagnosis of cancer, you are glad to have him to lean on, and you put the wedding off. That's OK, the time will be better later. In the meantime he moves in, you invite him into your family, and it's true, your parents adore him. So when he shows up at their place, a little too drunk to be out at night, they call you and of course they let him stay over.

You will never hear from your parents again, and you will never look at that man the same way.

Tonight, the extra bonus of staying out late with good company: the cab ride home. Alone, racing with the train over the Manhattan Bridge, cool night streaming in the window, the glowing necklace of the Brooklyn Bridge cables, full moon hanging in thick air, and soon to bed.

The guy from Sundance. A volley of emails. A bunch of telephone calls. And then, the conversation my savvy friends say they would kill for: come in, I'll coach you on your lines, then we'll tape you.

I bailed.

The guy from the Subject Bar. Emails, conversations, visits. And the opportunity I know others would kill for: when am I coming back to finish the shoot, x famous person comes here, and y person, and hot bands a, b, c.

I am stalling.

It's the becoming visible thing.

Skinny white boy, his hair still wet from the shower, wedges his narrow flanks into a spot too small on the subway bench. He wants to be alone with his book of F. Scott Fitzgerald short stories.

Hip hop girl with a beaded, hand painted trucker hat, an air-brushed skull, glitter lettering "Keep Love Black."

A rainy day, a double homicide, so much work to be done.

Visibility and invisibility keep chasing themselves around in my head. But I am far too sleep-deprived to make any sense of it, so this picture must suffice.