"​Tractor Winds, River Fog, and Saturday Heat"

I’m between takes today — laundry done, a small bit added to Painted People, and deeper into McBain’s Hark! than I meant to be. It’s one of those books you pick up for a chapter and suddenly you’re fifty pages in, wondering where the afternoon went.

Hardly anyone remembers summers hotter than the ones we have now, but I do — the ones on my grandfather’s farm in South Carolina. Most days I was lucky because I got to drive the tractor. I was a spoiled, privileged kind of child back then. The others were down in the rows doing the real work: picking corn or tobacco, loading it into the trailer behind me, and hauling it to the barn where workers strung the leaves on sticks. Those days were hot — blistering — but it didn’t feel quite as bad when I was driving down a row and the wind from the tractor hit my face. Still, it was freaking hot. The kind of heat where you sweat hard for no reason at all.

This morning started beautifully. Fog rolled over the river and the mountains in the distance, the kind of fog that looks like San Francisco wandered over just to say hello. I lingered by the water for hours, feeding scraps to a wild set of seagulls. A few Canadian geese tried to join in, but there’s no winning when seagulls are around — they take everything like it’s owed to them.

After the fog dissipated, the humidity settled in. The worst kind — the kind that wraps around you when you’re walking back up the hill to downtown. At one point I had to stop and sit at Abe Lincoln’s Lookout on South Street, trying not to think about the heat, the humidity, or much of anything else.

But it’s Saturday, and I’m okay. I’ve hit my goals, the City is just a train ride away, and if I head in this weekend, it’s the lively and colorful Dominican Day Parade in Midtown — the kind of celebration you shouldn’t miss. Walk the streets, feel the energy, and be happier simply because you’re in New York

Abraham Lincoln Lookout, South Street.