After our phone conversation I went out walking in the cold, with my hands in my pockets, under the lights on Broadway, which broadcast about their van Gogh colours on the unusually quiet strollers, who all walked quickly, their shoulders hunched against the cold. Then I turned right on Madison and walked up the hill, and the unseasonal frost made a small crunching under my boots (but my feet were very warm— I have very good boots, and excellent socks, though my ears were a little cold and became red). I stopped near the top of the hill under the large pines, where the street is very dark, and watched the little flakes of snow for a while, coming down through the boughs-- how they come down so obstinately, at their own pace (not like rain, which falls straight and fast to earth) each flake following its own curling path to the same destination. And after a while I started to get a little cold so I walked back down the hill and back down Broadway with its lights to the house where I was staying, where I looked at my picture of you for a while, in the warmth before going to bed.