Fly on a Windshield

A doddle!

It's a British expression that describes an experience almost too easy for words.
I've been back in N.Y.C. for almost a week, and, let's face it, I've had more of a vacation than a "working experience".
My friend Carrie drove down to the City with her 9 year old daughter Naomi to see me and we spent the day eating, shopping, drinking S*T*A*R*B*U*C*K*S* triple Soy Mochaccino whatevers...Spending the day with them is a sort of Mirror Planet version of "a day with Agnes and Saskia in Paris", even though my respective friendships with the 2 girls bear no resemblance...It's still a curious thing to the brain -- 'travel thousands of miles, and meet simulations of your former life...
I had Judy simulations at one time...Anne, in Paris, and Gina Hinton in Shepperton...
Gina in London, a couple of weeks back, was glowing - part lamb, part wolf, slouched in a Blues Café in Camden...She goes: "It's wild, opening my eyes and seeing you across from me".
Little does she know...
At times, way back when, If I glanced quickly enough out of the corner of my eye, I almost got a glimpse of Judy; then Judy turned up for real, almost as if to say: "Hey, those girls are nothing like me"!
Judy comes to mind of course, because New York is so heavily layered with her presence for me, especially after my long absence from the City.
I walked past the Planetarium, along the stretch of 81st Street, where we had a small apartment 18 years ago. The place looks identical, of course, or if anything, hasn't changed anymore than Judy and I have over the years. The Upper West Side is still "the Upper West Side"...So far from the Twin Towers that you can still avoid thinking about them altogether.
Here I am then, sitting in my corporate housing complex, 4 blocks away from the now world famous gaping hole of Ground Zero... Reflecting Semi-Smugly on many years of changes and turns which seem to have done little to alter the resolve of this massive City, or me, for that matter. This is a sort of 20 year arm-wrestling match, with no clear winner in sight.
The work front is unpredictable, for the coming weeks...The Canadians are still sending optimistic messages about "talks with actors" -- I'm tempted to mail them a copy of Art Linson's What Just Happened? , but sadly, the notion of Pearls to the Swine come to mind...They haven't listened much so far, and their Pollyanna approach to Filmmaking screams of total desperation, at this stage.
So much for returning to Rome, sadly. I'm all out of Sant' Eustacchio Coffee.
Vin Diesel and George Zakk are about to wrap with Sidney Lumet, and go back to Los Angeles; they may talk me into yet again another Private Jet trip across this great land. Am I ready for this? There's a Bulgarian Beauty out there, in the Ether, and being far-far away seems like a decent alternative to not knowing what to do with yourself -- I should know.
As I finally bought my copy of Sun Tzu's Art of War, yesterday, I felt like I was truly "Back in New York City" -- "Hovering like a fly, waiting for the Windshield on a Freeway"...