Walking through Manhattan is a very involved sensory experience. It was enhanced this evening by listening to a short story by Nicole Krauss - "Long Island"  - in which she recounts coming into the city as a child in the late '70s looking at the streets from the back of a huge unwieldy Cadillac. New York convinces you that it's the template for all cities, and by extension, all urban experiences. It casts this spell over you that is only truly broken when you stroll through other cities in other countries and realize that the transactional nature of life there is not essential to living and breathing. There is a way that people size each other up that has a silent but powerful hierarchical element to it. The direction of one's gaze mirrors one's social, economic and aesthetic status. Those on the lowest rungs of the totem pole look up at everyone - and sometimes out of despair scream at the top of their lungs. And even then no one bothers glancing in their direction.