i stepped into a check cashing place, in a somewhat seedy area. i had no business there. i just happened to spot a couple of payphones inside the place. i figured they’d be dead, but i tried one, got a dial tone, and dialed away, calling my voicemail to leave a blahblah message. it was sort of a strange pphone, it had no identifying information on it, regarding the owner of the phone, the phone’s number, or any of the things you would expect to see on a public telephone. i called my voicemail, left a short message, took a couple of photos of the phone, then left the check cashers to their business. i got home and noticed that the phone number showed up as Unidentified Phone Number. All very sketchy, this anonymous phone with its blocked phone number at a location such as that. i wonder if they trap callers somehow.

what a long walk today. one for the ages, even, though i guess there have been longer walks. i made it all the way over to Greenpoint, via Blissville, for once skipping a visit into the big cemetery, though i stopped at the gate just to say hi.

Hi.

i had endless energy today, but felt sad for some reason. tired as hell, but the sleep felt great last night. something about the clouds and gloomy/moody weather made me feel mercurially tired and sad, the sound of my own voice almost making me cry at one point.
why?

i shall check the GPS log later to see how long a walk this was. might have been well into the double digits in mileage. i wanted to get out some today, for the weather will go to hell soon and i won’t have so much opportunity as i imagine i would make for myself in the cold winter.

i mean, i like to imagine that i will get my 40-below jacket on and tread the sidewalks of sleet and arctic blast, for the benefit of there being so few other human beings on the roads at those times. i could explore areas i might otherwise be unwilling to enter with proper winter gear and goggles. alas, the weather is, truly, always too shitty for these brave sounding adventures. sometimes i make it out after the blast, but now i can’t rely on the city to plow the streets or sidewalks any more since last year’s debacle. and there was the night i nearly smashed my spinal cord to bits after slipping on some ice. that was fun times, fun times.

60-degrees in late december. wtf is that? i remember at the liquor store in late october, when there was that random snow blizzard, the guy at the store asked me, casually, “What’s up?” i said “What’s up? This bullshit weather, that’s what’s up.” there was much laughter, though i apologized for the comment. i could say the same abouut 60 degrees in late December too, this bullshit weather.

…..

the impending TV is shaping up in my mind. could i have spewed my money at better things? more meaningful things? better investments? aha, who cares, it’s only money. although, once in a while, i think about the problems facing the world, the abject poverty and ceaseless misery that consumes large swaths of humen endeavor, and i can’t imagine where my purchase of a 70″
HD/3D TV stands in the echelon of human gratuitousness. i’ll make up for my gluttony by watching some biafra belly documentaries.

…..

i gotta get rid of some stuff. the LP records. when will i ever play those old platters? never? that sounds about right. Never. a shelf full of books i can’t stand to part with — when will i ever read or even need them? never? that sounds right. Never.

i read a story by someone somewher eon the internet who said that his mother was a hoarder, though not the most deplorable type. she just held on to anything for which she felt she paid good money, and that stuff accumulates after a while.

she got sick, nearly dead, and was laid up in a hospital for several weeks. she recovered, but after she got back home she commented that “I’m gonna have to figure out what to do with all this stuff now.” to which her son replied, “well, if you’d died we were just gonna chuck all of it.”

i think about it like that now. my approach is generally to imagine if i would buy this thing if i saw it in a store. would i pay even 25 cents for copy of a human anatomy coloring book sitting on my shelf, and which i simply can not seem to part?