For years now I've made a practice of walking around Manhattan without stopping for a red light. I constantly surprise myself at how easy it is for me to go 10, 20 blocks, a mile or two even and never bide my time at a corner. There are tricks to this maneuvering or to, as it's more commonly known here, this jay-walking. Among them are tracing more diagonal lines that straight ones.

The positives to this form of pedestrian activity outnumber the negatives. The minus is limited to jay-walking's being illegal but rarely policed since the local force has more disruptive infringements to watch out for. The pluses include trimming as much as 15 or 20 minutes from a journey. Secondly, it's great cardio-vascular exercise. Thirdly, it's a wonderful way to see the city, as the resulting exhilaration heightens all the senses.

What I have recently realized is that I'm so good at the challenge because I've come to understand that my hometown has its rhythms, its tempos and I am in synch with them. The tempos, the rhythms of traffic during a weekday can be quite different from those on the weekend, the daytime tempos and rhythms much different from those at night. Having lived here as long as I have, I intuitively feel them all in my muscles and bones as much process them in my brain.

For this reason I would never encourage a visitor to try what I do so naturally sometimes - gazing up at the amazing skyline rather than at the hurlyburly around me, sometimes even reading a newspaper or a book. And for that reason I would never attempt the routine in, say, London or Paris, two other cities I know well. Know, but not enough to feel as much an integral part of their music as I am a part of the City's, so much a part that my footsteps now seem to me another inextricable and safe melodic line in the daily New York symphony.