I recently used a knife to slice a green pepper. It was a different knife than the one I usually use. Usually I use a big OJ knife for large green peppers, but since the peppers were smaller I tried a steak knife. I expect to resume use of the OJ knife for cutting green peppers, as the steak knife performed unsatisfactorily.
The men’s bathroom at Rockefeller Center that was “closed permanently” earlier this year appears to be re-opened. I wonder why it was closed in the first place. Its closure made me speculate on other uses for a bathroom space. A hair salon on 20-something street was once converted into a bar, leaving the hair dryers and other salon accouterments in a place where drinks are served. How about a bathroom bar? Hey, why not. I have been taking dumps at that Rockefeller Center bathroom for 17 years, but I’d be open to converting it to a pub. Sounds like a pub of the future in some ways.
The McDonald’s at Rockefeller Center appears to have closed, along with the expensive hair salon across the hall. I think I used to spend $28 per haircut at that place when I worked in the Time & Life building. Now I pay $10 for a haircut and feel less conspicuous for it. It is unusual for McDonald’s locations to close outright. I made this observation many years ago on this web site, and someone e-mailed to inform me that a McDonald’s in North Carolina had recently shut its doors. It could not compete with the local pizza and burger places, but it was noted as unusual that a McDonald’s had closed. I have not eaten anything from McDonald’s in so long I can’t even tell how many years. The disgust with the taste of their product came after a few months in which I made all my own food at home. I guess it woke up my palette, and I think that a few months of knowing what was in the stuff I ate made it jarring to bite into a Quarter Pounder with no idea what was in it. It tasted like smashed plastic and bones.
I took a bus to Rockefeller Center today. At its population peak there were 3 other passengers on board. I snapped pictures along the way, looking for faces. The bus driver opened his window to inform another driver that his (the other driver’s) rear tire was going flat. The other driver seemed skeptical of the bus driver’s helpful gesture, but then seemed to take it seriously after spying the tire in a rear view mirror.
I just got an email from a speechwriter for the Mayor of Providence, Rhode Island. I used to want to be a presidential speechwriter.
I found myself mumbling gibberish Germanic-sounding exhortations today. Walking through midtown, watching people to-ing and fro-ing, I wanted to stop and ask someone: “are you to-ing, or fro-ing?” Then I thought about the need to hyphenate those words. Hyphenless, the risk of pronouncing “toing” and “froing” as “toyng” and “froyng” made me think “Schaudenfreude” and then “Sturm und Drang” and other Germanic mouthfuls of sound. Next thing I knew I heard John F. Kennedy in Berlin announcing “ICH BIN EIN TÖIN UND FRÖNG!” to say that he, too, is busily to-ing and fro-ing.
The mailman’s delivery times have been unpredictable of late. Some days he is here before noon, other days not until 3pm.
I went to Patelson’s. I picked up an Archives brand 18 stave orchestra score book and carried it around the store for a while, eventually putting it back on the shelf. I went to the back of the store to see if the small collection of oversize contemporary music scores is still there. It is. Scores of Brian Ferneyhough and George Crumb seem to have occupied that stretch of shelf space since I first entered Patelson’s in 1985. At that time I think I remember seeing Stockhausen scores in that space. I was in New York in 1985 to audition for Juilliard. An altercation of sorts occurred between myself and a cashier at Patelson’s. I handed her copies of the Godowsky Studies on Chopin’s Etudes. I only wanted to know what they cost, but the cashier took that as a cue to start the transaction. When I announced that I did not want to pay $35 for the scores I thought she would smack me in the face with the books. No joke, either, she was genuinely angry and aggravated. A trifling incident in life, perhaps, but I felt responsible for it. However, my interpretation of this incident has been refined over the years. I think that voiding a transaction on that cash register must have been a complicated process. The store was also very crowded with customers at the time. She seemed to be living in a public hell. Years later I would eventually buy (at Patelson’s) the complete set of those Godowsky-Chopin Studies, published by Robert Lienau Musikverlag. I have Volume IV in front of me, and the remaining 4 volumes on the shelf behind me. More recently at Patelson’s I also bought Volumes 1, 2, and 4 of the Carl Fischer Godowsky Collection. I skipped Volume 3, as it contained little more than the Chopin Studies I already have; and I think Volume 5 was supposed to be pedagogical pieces for children.
My window is open. Someone outside just yelled “Fock Yooo!” (Not at me)
I have not typed into this part of my web site for a while, favoring the combination of my cell phone + a pocket-size, foldable full-size keyboard. I’ve posted this way from the tops of tombstones, from the hood of my car, from the Rose Main Reading Room, while cowering under the weight of over-amped rock and roll stars, from any number of pubs and dive bars – mostly for the sake of recalcitrance. The keyboard kicks back at times, and the screen is tiny, making it less tempting to indulge in textual diahretics. I do not like this feeling of typing into computer keyboards made of cheap plastic. It is too easy to say too much too fast. I intentionally chose a path of some restraint, thinking it would filter down to 4 or 5 words sentences that would otherwise explode into 30 or 40 mostly useless words. I actually think it worked. The exercise has been successful. But I still jump from medium to medium. The last few night’s I’ve scribbled into a tiny composition book, purchased at Staples in a set of 2 such books for $1.07. The table shakes as my pen scrambles over the page. It is a card table that I brought up here from Florida. It is the table on which we played Scrabble and other games throughout my youth.
I just ordered a new winter coat.
I will now write haiku.
Stutter in tandem. Let famous persons shower Your face with perfume. Tomato blankets, Clutched by sleeping hail, seed Weeping clouds of God. Bucking hornets stir Pools of vomit, mastering Homely rope jumpers.
