Month five of my time here. I am enduring.

Tuesdays are monastic nights. Nights for silence, for solitude, and for simplicity of mind. Really the only night among the entire weekspan I have freedom for the same disciplines.

After exiting my office on Madison and walking to Washington Mutual for a quick check of available funds [usually few funds are available], I board the train at 33rd Street and Park Avenue. One of the PS primaries lets out around 6PM, along with the majority of businessmen suitclad and resolute. We all board the train at the same time, hope being that we can all actually squeeze in before the unidentified electronic voice from somewhere overhead lets forth its stern demand: “STAND CLEAR OF THE CLOSING DOORS, PLEASE.”

Today I’ve made it on the train. And I’ve actually scored a great spot near a hefty Jamaican woman and her three shouting kids, just near the doors on the train-side opposite where people board. Spots near the wall on the peak-hour-6-train are treasures, and it is especially rare to board and immediately after find such a spot. Usually you can expect to spend at least a few stops next to a guy with body odor stretching his arms to the ceiling handrail.

Quite content I’d spend 55 blocks of travel time in this prized location, I put in my ear monitors and started Sufjan Stevens’ Songs for Christmas.

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Growing up, I possessed a strong aversion to Falling Backward from Saving Daylight in October each year. For a child whose curfew was Dark [followed immediately by the resounding confidence of my father's whistle], a pre-6PM sunset meant my time to play was cut short [and much shorter by December]. But what Winter did do was allow me to cultivate the imagination I so much loosed when sports became a central focus. Winter as a child was a time to build model airplanes, to learn to play the guitar, and when I first began to write.

Here in Manhattan’s November, the sun sets sometime around 4:45 pm. For one, New York is much closer the Arctic Circle than is my Texas homeland, and for another, Manhattan’s collection of scrapingsky building sblock out the light from the city below at least an hour earlier than, say, somewhere just across the Hudson. In my older young years, I’ve grown to deeply love the early nightfalls, for I find my thinking to be much more fruitful when the sky hangs the moon.

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On Tuesdays, I get off a stop early at 86th Street which follows Union Square, Grand Central, and 59th Street as one of the East Side’s major hubs. The area surrounding the 86th street stop is an interesting fusion of the Old World and the consumeristic, lust-heavy culture of the 21st century West. Here, preserved pre-war brownstones are overshadowed by gigantic neon signs, and chains by the likes of Best Buy, Taco Bell, and Starbucks, run local Upper East business into bankruptcy.

There is, however, one small market with vast variety of freshly baked bread, rare fruits from the East, cheese, olives and other fine pickled vegetables, and, most impressive of all, an entire wall-full of the most rare and cosmos-spanning selection of fine ale one could imagine. The storage case is divided into the regions of the Earth, each with a wide variety of styles within [although often Region determines a Style -- but I'll save that for a discussion on semantics]. A stop in this market is something I’ve drawn into the architecture of Tuesday nights since I first arrived to the City in June.

The year’s drifted into November now, and that means my little sundry fine-food nook has put away the Märzens to make space for the Winter Warmers. And in my Tuesday night rhythm, I’d come here to find one most suited for an evening in the Hours.

To my great surprise, they carried Anchor Our Special Ale 2006 [the freshest release of this rare type to be sure], so the decision was easy. Forking over $14 for six bottles clad with the Christmas colors and tree, I tied tight my scarves, fastened the breast-buttons of my peacoat, and set out into the frigid Manhattan dusk.

Eleven blocks to walk. Up Carnegie Hill on Park Avenue all the way to where Metro North emerges from the ground in a loud, angry vigor, I take a left on 97th and walk halfway to Madison Ave. In the distance under orange streetlights I can see some people in their winter running attire are coming in from the Park just a block away.

I face right at 57 E 97th, unlock the front door, check for mail in tenant post box [another night empty-handed], and ascend the five flights of stairs before reaching tiny apartment. I notice my calves don’t burn anymore, which must mean my body’s grown accustomed to life here.

Four keys are required to function in our Spanish Harlem brownstone – one for the front door into the mailroom, one for the door on the other side of the mailroom that leads into the stairwell, one for the mailbox, and one for the Apartment 19. Two hours after I left the office less than two miles away, I sift through the series of keys and find the one marked “19.”

One roommate is in the living room watching Nascar, and another will likely be working until Midnight. I place the Special Ale in the fridge, hoisting one out before I do, and pour it into a glass frosty from the freezer door. I head down the long, narrow hallway back into my room and close the door. And as I sit down to read, I can remember no earlier time when the concept of Home seemed so distant.