MORE FROM THE NOTEBOOKS

October 3, 2000, NYC: You don't have to go far in this city to find a mad person. There's one on every bus. And at least two defiantly obese people. Yet sit outside any cafe, pretending you're not breathing in traffic fumes, and the parade of people, especially in the chic-dilapidation districts, is so variegated it's salutary. It isn't only a plethora of race and face but of gait too. How many different styles of human propulsion there are! And how weird the co-existence of all this multiplicity alongside the homogenised omnipresent troughshops. Dunkin Donut Man (and Woman) is alive and ill on every block.

Twilight is settling slowly onto the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal Streets. People still rollerblade by, as in days of yore. A policeman on horseback rides down Bleecker in the opposite direction from the traffic, but halts at the lights. He wears a skyblue crash helmet. The horse is elegant, its coat an immaculate chestnut brown; it is scarcely less sinuous and thin than a racehorse. A filthy white sanitation truck stretches its neck forward around the corner, like a sick pterodactyl. Too many Dunkin Donuts perhaps.

A school bus drives past, with a notice on its side, which I do not understand the point of at all. I imagine it must be part of the terrifying upsurge of Health & Safety Fascism. It reads THIS BUS HAS BEEN CHECKED FOR SLEEPING CHILDREN.