The City Out My Window: 63 Views on New York
“Most of my friends live in tiny apartments, but mine is the smallest. It holds a desk, a bed, and two straight-back chairs, but there is nowhere for instance to eat. Even the view is small. My neighbor across the courtyard (the one whose window you're looking into) works nights, in a restaurant. If I'm at home during the day I often hear him playing symphonies and singing-not humming, really singing, along. Twice I have had to scare strangers off my fire escape. Luckily I have nothing worth stealing. And now they've put up one of these big new condos next door, it looks like a twenty-three-storey stack of aquariums, only with people instead of fish. If I were a burglar it would certainly deter me. The other thing I should say is that Matteo inspired me to wash my two windows and screw in a pair of wooden blinds, and in yet another case of life imitating art, thanks to him, this view (which when he drew it I always kept behind dirty curtains) has for me become a source of great pleasure and well-being.”
Lorin Stein, editor