After one morning, there is snow all over Manhattan, and even the warming air and gentle rain has yet to dissolve it. There is something very magical this time of year; perhaps it is the abundance of holiday parties that every workplace seems obligated to host, the twinkling lights, the unavoidable Christmas tree tunnels that line the sidewalks up and down Broadway.  Everyone seems to be blissfully unravelling.  Something seems very protected here, a safety in this cocoon, on this little island of millions of people.

Between the Baroque Christmas Tree at the Metropolitan Museum and a holiday party at a Columbia co-worker's apartment on 70th and Broadway, we walked through a snowy and lonely Central Park.  There were a few bike delivery workers, raccoons, a horse-drawn lit carriage, rats scurrying around the thick puddles of wet snow, a gathering of men on park benches laughing and warming with a few bottles.  From where does this invincible power of snow come?  It illuminates our steps and muffles the rest of the world.