We’re staying at the Millennium Hilton in NYC, 50th floor overlooking the WTC Plaza. Right now, One World Trade and surrounding buildings are reflecting a gold dawn. Everything else is steel grey punctuated with twinkling pinpoints of light. Quick camera phone pic.
I’m at work. I work for a large company and I’m in a building on one of their campuses. The buildings are arranged in a semi circle around a farm. So looking out my window, I can see sheep and lambs. At the moment, the lambs are all lying down with their mums. I can see about three fields, and they all have trees lining their boundaries. It really is a beautiful view and sometimes it’s nice to just zone out and stare out the window. It also means I can go for lovely walks at lunchtime, five minutes out of my building and it feels like I’m in the countryside. Bliss.
In the interests of balance, I can also see other buildings and car parks. But I ignore those.
Plain ol’ dark. There are several robins out there telling me the darkness is a temporary state, but at the moment there is not even a hint of daylight.
My neighbor’s roof, including the tree branch that’s been hanging down from the maple tree in his side yard and leaning on the edge of his house for two years. The gutter garden isn’t in bloom yet, but it’s nice and green after all the rain.
If I stand up, I can see my fence, my yard, and the irises about to bloom, but I’m not planning on standing up until I get more coffee in me.
I see a cloudless blue sky, the blue spruce that I planted about 20 years ago that is now 40’ high (it was sold as a dwarf that was supposed to top out at 15’), three houses across the street and various other trees in the foreground and background.
There’s a white pine between the building and the sidewalk, a parking lot across the sidewalk that’s about half-filled with cars, and trees on the far edge of the lot. To the right is a 6 story office building that’s part of this complex, and right up close, a robin who’s beating his pea-sized brain to pulp as he tries to drive his reflection out of his territory.
Dawn is just beginning here. Out my bedroom there are a couple of Blue Jays squaking at each other, and past that, at the bottom of the hill, there is a ribbon of fog hanging over the river. Rain clouds are sitting on the hills, so I doubt the fog will last long.
The razor wire surrounding the NRO is twinkling in the sunlight. . . They are right at the end of my street. Between here and there are just streets and trees and parkign lots. I can also see planes going by on their way to Dulles.