Hawk vs. Squirrel

I've spent the last week doing all sorts of stuff that has shifted my attention away from the blog--some interesting, some less so. But the as-yet-secretly-named second novel has been tugging at me a bit, and for a time it was too impossible to try to do both. The language was too fragile to start working here, too. So I just didn't.

Among those other strange behaviors--not writing, that is--were: digging my van out of the snow piled up around the front end by the city's plows; writing letters to illustrious photographers hoping they'll donate something for the upcoming Circus Amok benefit performance; building a database for VUE, watching those Oscars, and riding the B61 back and forth from Brooklyn to Queens, listening to the polish women talk about whatever it is they talk about after doing their shopping.

At the market on Saturday, a hawk was having face-off with a squirrel--and after a good 15 minutes of everyone staring up at the drama in the trees, fifty or so photographers clammoring up lampposts to get a better shot, and more cell phone cameras pointed at the pair than should be allowed, they simply decided to go their separate ways, and no blood was rendered. Another farmer reminded me that those Discovery Channel nature shows take days to shoot, and include hours and hours and hours of that kind of interaction--nothing. The money shot is harder to come by. So to speak.