a bit of a freakout on the triborough/rfk bridge yesterday. same breathing problems i had a month or so ago at the piano recital. throat was closing and i couldn’t catch my breath no matter how hard i tried. i know, of course, that trying too hard contributes to the problem. as does thinking about it too much. those only exacerbate the problem, though. i odn’t know what exactly causes it in the first place. it happens prety reliably at a certain point on the queensboro bridge. whenever i take a bus i have come to expect weirdness in my breathing at about 1/3rd of the way over the queensboro bridge.

it was pretty distressing on the bridge, though, where there was virtually no source for relief. i thought of asking one of the people illegally biking over the bridge for a swig from their bottle of water, but i next imagined that they would look at me and flee, pedal-pushing down the ramp which is clearly labeled a no-biking zone.

there is a sign on the triborough that was new to me when i saw it in either february or march of last year. the sign says “LIFE IS WORTH LIVING” and it says that there is a suicide lifeline telephone 150 feet ahead. alternatively, suicidal folk can call a toll-free number, but be sure to bring your cell phone!

i have looked high and low and hither and yon for the Lifeline suicide hotline telephone, but it seems not to exist. what kind of cynical cruelty would the appropriate authorities have in mind by directing depressed people to a non-existent source of help?

i sent an e-mail to the MTA last night, asking them where the Lifeline phone is located. no reply yet, but they say it can take 15 days for a reply.

i noticed the sign after returning from San Francisco, where the Golden Gate Bridge walkway is punctuated by signs and suicide hotline telephones every 20 or 30 feet. that bridge is a magnet for suicidalists, but those telephones and signs preaching to all that LIFE IS WORTH LIVING struck me as more sour than conciliatory. who in their wrong mind is going to change their decisions based on some cloying municipal signage?

…..

i had a genius moment 2 nights ago. a new web project. this time i plan to plan. instead of my usual approach of jizzing out hundreds of pages all at once i’ll pace things.

it is in the spirit of an idea i had a few years ago. i shared the idea with a friend who had been a photo editor for 20 years, and he thought it was a great idea. of course, editors are often full of shit, but his stamp of approval signaled to me that the idea had *some* potential.

i never got around to executing the idea in full, though i guess you could say i had success in the limited executions. without being too too vague about it (because i might still revive the idea) i noticed a few weeks ago that a magazine’s web site has rolled out a weekly feature that is virtually identical in concept to my mental machinations of yore. and you know, it would not surprise me if my sharing the idea with the photo editor friend made its way to the editors of that other magazine web site. stuff like that trickles around.

treacle trickles.

…..

what else was there to say? big plans, big content, epic expository thunder. falling into the silence of rain on the ocean.