Easter Sunday

Today Kip and I layed around in Astoria Park for a while, watching people practice swordfighting, play with their dogs, celebrate the holiday, and get their kites miserably stuck in the budding trees. One of my favorite things about the park is that you can get on the grass all year long--something you can't always do in the Manhattan parks; Central Park's lawns aren't open until next week, and some will be another two weeks before they're fully walk-on-able. I like the grass on my toes.

Throughout the neighborhood, people were gathered in groups, wearing pastels, the girls in dresses tied in ribbons, the boys in suits too big, too bulky to make them look like anything other than children whose parents would prefer they act like adults. Girls just grow up faster somehow. Like their adulthood is already present within them when they are born. Like they hide it.

This week I had a rather unexpected breakthrough with my second novel, (are all breakthoughs unexpected?) which, though going ever so slowly, is still cranking away in my mind all day, all week, all the time. It's the way novels are written, I guess. At least it's the way mine are. Shazam, it just comes to you, like that.