One of the best Christmas gifts ever. A half dozen fresh eggs, given by a friend, whose chickens scratch and cluck in a little hamlet up the Hudson River valley. I carried the eggs carefully, a rainy night, the Washington Heights bus station, an hour on the subway with boozy men, cranky children, and finally home.

This morning I am sitting on my bed looking out the back window. The sky is low with rain and fog. The bottle-washing machine behind the grocery store is sending up sheets of steam. I am holding in my hand one perfect egg, soft boiled. It is peeled of its brown shell and it is sending up its own curls of steam. Next to me is a tall glass of café au lait, also steaming, and what a way to begin this first day after Christmas.

(And another gift: this blog got its very first gay porn spam today. Huzzah! I was starting to feel inconsequential.)