As I stepped out of Kamran’s apartment building yesterday morning and passed the park that lines his walk, I saw a woman coming out with a baby strapped to her front in one of those canvas harnesses. The idea of being hauled around in one of those has always appealed to me, but this one actually made me straight-up jealous: the baby was wearing a fuzzy brown fleece one-piece suit with bear ears on its hood. And his arms were wrapped around his mother’s stomach, his head pressed to her warm belly as she hugged him in the cold. It looked like the coziest, lovingest thing ever.

Then, when I got down into Grand Central, there was a scantily-clad man–I’m talking wifebeater made into a half-shirt here–playing some really sexy music on an electric violin. “Sexy music coming from an electric violin, the inherently lamest instrument ever?” you might ask. But yes, it totally was. And it was only made sexier by the fact that he had his eyes closed and his head thrown back, clearly enjoying what he was doing. Which made me smile so much that I had to turn away. Nice start to my day, right?

But THEN, I was getting off the 4 train at Bowling Green before work, and as I was waiting in the huge line that forms before the staircase leading up to the street, this Italian-looking guy in his 30s came stumbling through the crowd with BLOOD FLOWING DOWN HIS FACE. He was like, “Excuse me, please,” and politely made his way down the stairs while all of us stood and stared, and then he hopped into the train as if everything was fine.

And THEN, I was on my way to get my hair cut last night when I heard a woman telling the booth attendant at the 8th Street R stop about a man on the staircase. I assumed she was complaining about a disruptive homeless fellow, but when I got to the stairs myself, I saw nothing but a very well-dressed older guy who happened to be holding up the line to the street by taking a loooooooooooooong time on each stair and intermittently slumping toward the wall as if he was having trouble standing. Turns out he was having a HEART ATTACK right there in front of me. But naturally I continued on, selfish and vain as always.

NEW YORK!