"...fiefdoms"

Okay here I live out my Andy Rooney fantasy. We know people. Folks close middling, and far. While I was out with Jorge my upstairs pal. He was assisting me to the library. I went rather extreme shut-in after a recent police encounter.

(My local branch in that last snow above.)

Anyway while out we ran into several folks I knew. Knew in the varying ways I mention.

The local Fed-Ex guy drove by, and honked his horn at me. We then walked back along the Parkway as it was such a fine day.

Two separate encounters with folks from the Chinese takeout I used to go to when I could afford it. Joy the owner said I should come by anyway. Routine kindness is there all around us. It is what keep us all alive.  

Jorge met some folks he knew introduced me we chatted. We joked about my high school Spanish. We ran into some Jehovah Witnesses. They've had a spot by the subway station since I was little. I've seen generations of them handing stuff out.

William whom I knew was there. I'd sometimes speak with him on my way to work or just going here or there on the trains. I once asked him to pray for me during a bad patch,...he did. I still thank him like I did today. 

NYC the Emerald City is really like the Holy Roman Empire,...google it's crazy quilt map of contending fiefdoms. We're an Empire of small towns knitted together into these islands of dreams. Except for the Bronx we're all on islands.
We're provincial cosmopolitans. This might be why we're so nuts,...and interesting.

Island peoples have a certain way of seeing a certain notion of reality. Ask any Jamaican or Brit. Anyway there, and back again,...again.