As I hurried to make the Metro-North train, a well-dressed older gentleman stopped me outside the secret entrance to the Oyster Bar. (I know this because I use the bathrooms in the Oyster Bar when the public ones in Grand Central Station are too crowded, and I use the secret entrance which leads directly to the back of the Oyster Bar where the bathrooms are located.) "Miss!" he said, pointing to the banana I had just bought to alleviate the stomachache I had just gotten from the Excedrin I had just taken to combat the pounding headache I had not shaken even after the two espresso shots I had just pounded.

"Yes?" I said, putting the banana in my satchel. This banana cost me $0.59 in Grand Central Station and I was feeling huffy about this. It would have been $0.25 in a bodega. I hate how Grand Central and Penn Stations are like other countries, with their own economies (with a 2-to-1 exchange rate to the rest-of-New-York-dollar) and their own populations (of commuting suburbanites). The Voice costs $1.25 in these train stations, proving that they, much like the United Nations, are not actually a New York City territory.

The man leaned toward me. "The secret to bananas is never to put them in the refrigerator," he said conspiratorially. "Did you know that, young lady?"

"You know," I said. "I did know that. But thanks! Thanks very much."

I've noticed that as people get older, they seem to distill down to a few basic but potent insights that they repeat more and more, as if trying to transmit their most essential knowledge as clearly as possible in the dwindling time they have left on this planet. Either that or they can't remember anything else. Sometimes I feel entropic, as if my life and my very being are spreading ever further through time and space, as if one day I will meet my end in an explosion that will give off whatever comparatively paltry light the combustion of a human being can generate. But old people make me think that there is an opposite and equal force in the aging process, a kind of centripital spiral, a gravity. Maybe as parts of us fly off or are burned up in the spectacular joys and failures of our fading youth, some increasingly inward force is working to bind what remains into the individual nugget of the truth and wisdom that is the jewel produced by our journeys through this particular lifetime.

And so, because it seemed very important to this man outside the Oyster Bar today, I repeat:

The secret to bananas is never to put them in the refrigerator.

People who sneeze or cough profusely on crowded subway cars earn a germaphobic glare from me--unless they are me. Due to the Microscopic Enemy, now in fast retreat, I have been hacking and sneezing my way through the week's commutes. Yesterday, some kind of delay on the L train had piled up commuters four deep at the Union Square Station. Manhattan-bound trains were passing by constantly on the other side. Where were they all going? There's only two waiting spots down at the Eighth Avenue Station. (I'm always amazed by people who get out at the Eighth Avenue station and ask if it's the last stop. The trains pull into that station and brake three feet from a ceramic-tiled wall. If the conductor yelling, "Last stop! Eighth Avenue! Last stop!" didn't do it for you, perhaps the fact that the tunnel terminates is a clue?)

When the Canarsie-bound train finally crawled into the station at that pathetic, wheezing half-speed the L line affects in inclement weather, the crowd gathered to pour itself in. I allowed the force of the crowd to suck me toward the door, and then found myself having to exert a subtle pressure and wiggling of the shoulders to force myself into the train. Getting on a delayed subway train during rush hour is like being born underground, in reverse. The people near the door held our collective breath, like dieters trying to fit into a wedding dress. The doors chimed and closed, the train lurched. The entire mass of people fell onto each other, but having no room to fall down, righted itself. I had nothing to hold onto and looked expressionlessly into the eyes of an older Asian man and a tired-looking blonde woman whose makeup was full of infinitesimal bits of glitter. I wondered if this was some kind of new makeup technology. Makeup companies are always advertising technology that rivals that of the space program to make your skin look more like skin.

Suddenly, I felt a familiar tickle shoot from my nostril up the nerve that they say you can paralyze with an eyebrow piercing. My left eye began to tear and an involuntary inhale spiraled into my throat. There was no turning back from this one. I was about to blow this subway car wide open. I squinted into the flourescent lights and detonated the nasal explosion.

I've meet some people who sneeze with a dainty little "choo" noise, or even those so unobtrusive that they leave off the vowel sound and sneeze like this: "ch." (My mostly-blind high school physics teacher, whenever he heard these sneezes, would stop class and ask, "Who did that? Who sneezed that way? It's very bad for your ears to sneeze that way." He was, understandably, concerned about maintaining one's hearing.) I don't understand how anyone sneezes that way. I don't sneeze so much as roar. My sneezes, if they were a word, would be, "HABACHOOOM!" The sneeze itself is followed by an expulsive sighing and gasping noise, as my face recovers from the speed and force.

"HABACHOOM!" I sneezed, ducking into my parka and trying to contain the event with my hands. My fellow riders, having nowhere to go, flinched and listed gently away from me. They politely ignored me as I sighed, gasped and sniffed. Only when I reached for the last spot on the nearest pole did I catch the woman direclty in front of me swiping at the back of her neck with her mitten.

Sorry, lady.

I have heard some disturbing things. I have heard that the unelected leader of the nation I refuse to recognize laid out a terrifyingly imperialist plan at his $40 million pageant celebrating his second non-election to the position of Moron Puppet-Emperor of Evil. (The FUCK YOU movement sends its deepest regrets for being unable to attend this event.)

I wouldn't know. I'm in a news blackout. I tried to get a Sunday Times today but found all the newsstands and delis sold out, and so the blackout continues. The news of today is that the moon is full and casts such a gentle bluish light on the glittering piles of crystallized water.

While everyone in the Northeast is under the weather, I am doubly under the weather. It seems that some microscopic enemy is taking advantage of my weakened constitution to use my larynx as a temporary home. I can't imagine this has anything to do with last weekend's extended exposure to the elements on the oceanic cliffs of Newport, followed by a solid week of nightly debauchery during which I drank, smoked and screamed along with the rock bands I went to see quite a bit and slept hardly at all.

No matter. I will soon vanquish this microscopic enemy. I will root it out wherever it may hide. Even though this enemy is in my larynx, I think I will begin by bombing my big toe. There's oil in my big toe and I've always felt that it was against me.

The good thing about having no sense of moderation whatsoever is that while this behavior can make you sick, it can also hasten your recovery. It's all a matter of seeing your road to wellness as another--albeit different--form of overstimulation.

Today, I am the Ozzy Ozbourne of folk remedies. There is no immunosupporitve substance I haven't tried, or mixed with another immunosupporter. I am currently drinking some tea made from ginger, lemon juice, raw garlic, cayanne pepper and honey and feel almost good as new already. I've knocked back several shots of herbal cold remedy, chased 'em with glasses of Emergen-C, and popped a few zinc pills on top of that. For good measure, I watched an episode of M*A*S*H. If that doesn't cure what ails me, I will have to take to my bed and wait for the high color of consumptive flush to rise in my cheeks before I begin receiving visitors to pay their final farewells.

I know that the evidence I've presented here makes it seem like it's my fault that I'm sick, and while I do take full responsibility for my actions, I would like to say that it is also no coincidence that I have fallen ill in the week of the Inauguration. I consider my laryngitis to be a direct result of the horrific policies of the Moron Puppet-Emperor of Evil's administration, and I am going to bill him accordingly for damages incurred on account of being unable to go sledding today at the park. I realize that this is one of the lessor charges against this administration, and I am perfectly willing to wait until the Hague is all through prosecuting them for their war crimes and human rights violations before the multinational panel of judges hears my case.

Since the media outside this country is far more likely to accurately report on what's going on in it than our own news media, I frequently turn to foreign newspapers to stay informed. While studying abroad in England during college, I was amazed to find out that England has a broadsheet that willingly identifies itself as left wing. It's called the The Guardian. Not only that, but this paper produces a Sunday-sized paper on Saturday, and then has some kind of sister paper, called The Observer, that is responsible solely for the Sunday paper. This means that both days of the weekend are essentially Sunday. If you love enormous newspapers full of frivolous articles on things like art and culture enough to plow through them twice in one weekend (and I do), the Guardian and the Observer are a dream come true.

Returning to America meant returning to my first newspaper love, the incomparable New York Times, which I still love despite the fact that it has told me many atrocious lies in the course of amusing, infuriating and entrancing me. It seems that's always the way when it comes to love. I used to think that love was truth and truth was a white light in your veins that emanated from your heart, but I was probably just high at the time. When we consider "What is love?" as it relates to loving The New York Times, loving it from the scrolling font of its banner to the sentence-fragment witticisms of the movie descriptions in its primly-titled "Television" section, loving it despite its propensity to under-report the number of people who attend demonstrations, despite its guiltily guilty-liberal pomposity, despite the snobbery of its advertisements and its thinly veiled insinuations that the paper itself is only for rich people--when we consider "love" through this lens, love becomes more complicated than truthful white light.

It was not in The New York Times, but rather in my paper on the side, my old trans-Atlantic love, The Guardian, that I learned that Prince Harry was photographed at a costume party wearing a Nazi uniform. Uproar among British Jewish organizations is ensuing. The 60th anniversary of Aushwitz is this month, Harry's not fit for his chosen career as a military officer, etc., etc. But that's not the best part. The best part is that Prince William was apparently at the party as well, more appropriately clad in his "homemade lion and leopard outfit more in keeping with the party's 'native and colonial' theme."

Ah, yes. It would have been so much less offensive if Harry had just dressed up as a colonist. It's the fact that he dressed as a member of a mass-murdering empire from this century that's so offensive. Why go runing a tasteful "native and colonial" party with such an ugly reminder of such a recent attempt at raping, pillaging, colonizing and exterminating whole peoples and countries when you could instead dress up as someone who did that a long time ago? Or, you know, dress up as a "native?" Because while a royal in a Nazi uniform is a "disgrace," as one official quoted in the article said, a royal dressed up as native--that's not offensive at all.

Or maybe Harry could have dressed up as a plantation owner. Or one of those English colonists who beat up on Gandhi. Someone from the British East India company. An African colonist. A slave trader--they're colonists, aren't they? Harry, you idiot, you case in point of high-class inbreeding, don't you get that we can't have a little chuckle about atrocities until all the people who participated in and survived them are dead? You're the spare heir to one of the largest colonizing empires in world history. Your ancestors, fleeing from the horrific weather of your home country, travelled the world seeking warm sunshine and people to enslave and steal from. All of this happened a very long time ago and therefore is not upsetting nor in poor taste.

But it is understood that we simply do not dress in outfits from defeated would-be empires of this century when invited to dress as "native and colonial" at a costume party. I think the British media should cut you some slack, Prince Harry. You were just following the theme. You should have done like your brother and dressed in a "lion and leopard cosutme," whatever the fuck that is.

I could say something about the tsunami. I could say something about American imperialism. I could say something about Susan Sontag (apparently she was very illuminating and is about to become posthomusly famous to me, among many others). I could say something about the first season of M*A*S*H, which I am in the process of watching, or the last season of Sex and the City, which I am also in the process of watching. I could say something about yoga, and how it has alerted me to the both painful and illuminating possibilities of my sacral chakra. I could say something about the first truly drinkable $5.99 bottle of wine I have found and its unfolding tannins. I could say something about New York City and how much there is to consume and smell here. I could say something about the language used to instruct women how to perform craft projects, and how it is very different from the language used to instruct men how to perform craft projects. I could say something about my friend who I haven't seen in a year who is getting married next weekend, or my other friend who I haven't seen in a year who married her husband four separate times last year, so all of their grandparents could attend without having to move from their individual locations. I could say something about my own grandparents, who turned 84 and 86 last week. I could say something about my other grandparents, both of whom are buried in New Jersey. I could say something about my favorite band, who sing a song that says "when I die they're gonna bury me in Jersey." I could say something about my plans for death, which do not involved being buried in New Jersey. I could say something about the taxes I owe, and how I do not approve of what they will be used for. I could say something about the kindness of my mother's voice. I could say something about the sweetness of just-bathed children in fuzzy pajamas. I could say something about the sound of the key turning in the lock when you are bored at home and wish someone would come home and talk to you, how it is different from the sound of the key turning in the lock in the apartment next door, which is not followed by someone entering your apartment, which is followed instead by the sound of footsteps walking away, growing muffled, disappearing.

If the rest of 2005 is anything like the first 24 hours of it have been, then I can say that it's going to be a very good year. It began with a very great party. It was the kind of party where everyone talks for so long about so many interesting things that the party believes itself to be making real progress on the question of nature vs. nurture, the kind of party that ends when the five remaining guests tiptoe out so as not to awaken the hosts, who have gone to sleep, and find themselves in a brilliantly sunny spring morning on the first day of January.

It's true, what everyone says--the morning really is a beautiful time of day. The last time I saw anything after the dawn and before high noon it was months ago and not in this country. It is very lovely the way the sun shines so brightly. I tend to only catch the sun on its way up or down and had forgotten how brilliant and illuminating it is, all that hydrogen fusing into helium 92 million miles away. It made the sequins on my disco-ball dress all the more shiny.

I've resolved not to make any resolutions because they just make you feel guilty. All I can say about the coming year is that I will try to remain well hydrated and while I hope that neither my person nor my heart sustains any major injury in 2005, I can't say that the risk of these eventualities is my primary concern.