When it feels like November in his soul, he drives to the southern tip of Manhattan, looks out over the Hudson River and over to the Statue of Liberty. That always works, his heart expands and his mind is cheerful. Every day that it doesn’t rain, he sits on his modest balcony on the 17th floor, can’t get enough of the different shades of blue in the New York sky, and particularly likes “sublime Smurf blue.”

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