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I don't know what I've done to deserve it, but everyone was very nice to me yesterday. First off, there was a free concert by The Feelies and Sonic Youth (thank you River to River Festival). After the show, M. and J. and I went to our favorite Mexican restaurant, where they kept giving us free drinks (thank you, Maria). And after that, I went out and watched a very impressive fireworks display (thank you, Macy's). And I had the day off work.

I could get to like this 'celebrating American independence' stuff.

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Back in 2002, when I worked in Paris, I would occasionally get a phone call from the Musée d'Art Moderne. “Olafur's installation has crashed again,” the person on the other end would say. “Can you help us restart it?” At that point, depending on the seriousness of the problem, I'd either give instructions over the phone or get on the Metro and go over and sort it out.

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In 2003, the first time that I went to Coney Island's Mermaid Parade, I actually dressed up and marched in the parade. My costume, such as it was, consisted of some nets woven with colored paper and hung with a collection of rubber sea creatures — a blue whale, a couple of squid, and a mermaid Barbie knock-off doll. I suppose I was some kind of allegory of overfishing. I also wore a rain jacket, because the parade took place in the middle of a torrential rainstorm. The rain may have made my bedraggled 'recently-trawled' look more authentic, but as a costume it wasn't exactly prize-winning material.

This year, by contrast, was bright and hot, and the parade was a much bigger and more spectacular affair. The participants included mermaids in every variety, size and hue, several dozen assorted Neptunes, stilt walkers, women with ferris wheels on their heads, schools of jellyfish, a large tree, marching bands, parasol-twirling dancers, a crowd of women in Marie Antoinette wigs towing a guillotine, a handful of robots, and much more besides.

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It's quite possible that every human being is tormented by some great, personal, unanswered question. Is there a God? Why did she marry him instead of me? Do UFOs exist? And so on, and so forth. Few of us, however, go so far as to write them on a piece of cardboard and wear it on our backs as we walk down the street. And very few of us, I suspect, are tormented by the need to know the answer to this particular question.

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On our way to the Tompkins Square green market last Sunday, we stopped briefly at the community garden on Avenue B. While M. cast a critical eye over their flowers, I studied the Toy Tower, a ramshackle pile of timbers that rises sixty-five feet above the garden, decorated with toys and other found objects. I couldn't decide if it was my imagination, or whether the structure had acquired an ominous backwards lean.

Whether I was imagining it or not, the same thought has apparently struck someone in the Parks Department. The Toy Tower is to be taken down. It's sad to see another piece of Lower East Side history disappear, but I guess I should be grateful that my chances of being struck down by a falling railway sleeper or a mildewed toy kangaroo will now be measurably reduced.

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The softest kitty in the world is no more.

Pomelo, M.'s cat, died today, from lymphoma. The disease ran its course very quickly; she had shown no signs of illness or discomfort before I left for India, but shortly after I returned it became clear that she was ill and she declined steadily from then on. There's some consolation in the fact that she hung on long enough for M. to return home and say goodbye to her.

She was a truly delightful creature, and we both miss her very much already.