As it turns out, The Christ Child is moving to London sometime late summer. That's a fine how-do-you-do. He'll be unavailable for a big birthday he's having next year. His father is having a big birthday in a week or so; the Chows and I decided there's nothing else to do but hop the red eye out of Seattle go to New York for a long week to drink, eat, run around, music up, laugh and ponder our fates as human beings who love and long for intimacy. But not at the expense of any shopping opportunities that might present themselves.

Nobody really understands JBelle's love affair with New York. JBelle, they say, are ya outta yer mind? Ya were born in CdA on Penn Ave, ya ran up and down the hills around the North Fork of the Coeur d'Alene River like it was Foster Avenue in June, ya fished the Joe, swam the CdA city beach and rode yer bike to Hayden with no fear when you were 8 years old! Yer one of North Idaho's proudest daughters! How can ya even unnerstand what them Porta Ricans are sayin'?

Well, folks, I'll tell ya. Simple. I loves New York. I do. First, it just isn't that much different that the woods of North Idaho, with beauty everywhere. In the eyes of the people who ride the train, in the chirps of the birds in the trees in front of the brownstones along 22nd Avenue, in the scrolly ironwork of the fire escapes that lace through Soho, in the morning light on the running trail along the East River, in the ruddy cheeks of the guys who work in the Kosher delis, in the pride of people who are determinedly trying to make it as they scurry through the day, dispatching the tasks of living in the city. It's so beautiful.

Yeah, but there's so much crime and danger! They'll kill ya as soon as look at ya! Them people are crazy! Folks, folks, folks. I'm from North Idaho; crazier than that? I have walked home from the theatre on Broadway 60-70 blocks at 12:30 am many times. Never was scared once. Had many more anxious moments riding my bike out 15th in Coeur d'Alene to Honeysuckle Beach in Hayden. I have been accosted by street kids on the streets of Spokane at 8:45 pm at night, 3 blocks from my office, in a manner that frightened me and left me angry. And you know JBelle just isn't scared of too many things....I have never once had a bad experience in the city nor the woods; I just loves 'em both. They love me back.

Still, people have persisted--so JBelle has had no choice but to just show 'em herself--her own New York; now some of 'em even have moved to New York and others say, feel like taking me to New York sometime soon?

JBelle is always in a New York State of Mind as she is always ready to ride the Hiawatha or the Coeur d'Alenes. Her heart sings and her soul soars as the beauty and the wonder fold in, around, under and completely over her. La vie est Belle.


JBelle
Bellemaison
The 'Kan EWA