1/23 The lights across the Hudson, which I can see from my window, flicker unusually strong tonight. When I first moved here, and I had that studio up on the 14th floor, the window of which went to the inner yard, I had absolutely no access to, and no idea whether there even were apartments with an actual view of the outside world, the world outside this building. Late in the pandemic, when I did realize that there were many vacancies in the building, and I explored some of them – the doors of empty apartments are usually not locked – I could not believe just how vastly different, and totally unexpected, the views from the different outside windows were. You wouldn’t believe you’re in the same city, let alone the same neighborhood, or in fact, the same building. My big window in this second apartment of mine, from which I can see just a tiny patch of the Hudson between the buildings along 91st street, is one of the main reasons I’m living here.