Over 1.6 million people live in Manhattan, and only 23,000 in its “West Village.”  A neighborhood character (I nicknamed him the Sentinel as he always seems to stand guard) told me that “West Village” is an artificial construct, and that there’s really just “Greenwich Village.”  Although he’s slept on its concrete sidewalks, fought with his bare fists whom he saw as trespassers to his Village domain (I watched once as he clocked one man in broad daylight on West Fourth Street), and has scrapped by for decades longer than I’ve been here, I still disagree.  Just take a walk the length of 10th Street from West to East or vice versa.  You can feel the change happen at the midpoint.  The above photo was taken on the corner of West 10th Street and Waverly.  The great joy of walking the West Village is the incongruity of the street layouts, the general lack of monstrously tall buildings, and the diversity of storefronts.  Don’t forget the people either.  In this case I photographed the display of the Three Lives Bookstore, across the street from Julius, the working man’s gay bar, or so it appears to me, and the tenement buildings lining the street.  Last night I was called in to work at BookBook, another bookstore which is located on Bleecker Street between 6th and 7th Avenue.  It is a small store, but don’t let its size convince you that it doesn’t contain all sorts of treasures.  I bought St. Augustine’s “Confessions” for a friend last night, and a week or so prior I purchased C.S. Lewis’ “The Four Loves,” St. Thomas More’s “Utopia,” as well as Flannery O’Connor’s “The Complete Stories.”

Here’s a passage from Flannery O’Connor’s “A Temple of the Holy Ghost:”

As they were leaving the convent door, the big nun swooped down on her mischievously and nearly smothered her in the black habit, mashing the side of her face into the crucifix hitched onto her belt and then holding her off and looking at her with little periwinkle eyes.