i felt unrested but zesty today. i walked to manhattan, over the qboro bridge, mumbling nonsense into my headset/mic. it was very windy and i suspect the sound quality will be poor. not that it matters mucho.
i did something kind of lame today. in follow-up to a 311 complaint i submitted 2 months ago i finally got an automated response which said that the case had been closed. only wait… nothing was done. the complaint(s) (plural because i accidentally submitted 2 complaints for the same thing) was about a non-working payphone near where i live. i expected nothing, really, from the complaint. no action, even though laws mandate action.
the responses had some vague municipal doubletalk, adding that the cases are closed.
i took printouts of those e-mail responses and stuffed them onto the payphone, between the handset and the hook. it looked kinda cool. it’s a calling card, i guess, for Verizon, should they ever choose to fix the phone.
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i ordered a laminator. i’ll use it for the payphone memorial project. up until recently i’ve only left photos of payphones at the spots where they used to stand. inevitably they quickly blew away or were otherwise removed. with suitable bulk from lamination and some sticky stuff on the back i plan to make the memorials somewhat more permanent. i might even bring a hammer and nails if it comes to that. or superglue.
the laminator should arrive Friday. that, a hard drive for the unreliable RAID, and some other nonsense round out the first amazon order of the year. i’m not going to spend so much on amazon this year. i’m still making use of stuff i bought last year, and waiting to read or look through poetry and picture books i bought 6 months ago.
speaking of which, i read a funny poem yesterday. i think it was richard wilbur. it was about a kid who was told that if he dug a hole in the ground and just kept digging and digging he would reach China, where everything looked different. they walked upside down, the people looked different from him, and the whole atmosphere of life was just… different. so he starts doing this one day. he starts digging to China. he becomes skeptical about the stories he’d heard, but he keeps digging anyway.after a few hours the heat and the sun start to get to him. the hole has gotten deeper, and his head barely rises above the ground. the sun makes him dizzy, the heat makes him ill, the buildings above the ground start to look like they are spinning, the ground itself twirls asunder. and the boy says “This must be China. I made it!”
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so much left to read but my eyes are bad now. that shit hit me like a bag of bricks. suddenly i have to take off my glasses to read anything. guess i should grab one of those giant magnifying glass thingies used by elderly readers.
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o, i saw a funny thing today. the subway passed over a construction site, and a huge sign in the middle of the site said “WORK SAFELY”, and on the next line in smaller print it said “YOU COUNT.” but i did a double-take on that one. i thought it said “WORK SAFELY YOU CUNT”. i laughed.
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i noticed something today. actually i noticed it a few weeks ago: i don’t get the breathing disorder-type problems any more. it hasn’t happened for months. it must have been the whisky. i experimented with whisky drinks for a little while, but i think they made me breathe weirdly. i did sortakinda have the problem at Godspell, and at Tosca, but not so bad, really. i think that was just anxiety of confinement. with the whisky drinks i would wake up at all hours of the night, wheezing and heaving just to catch my breath. that hasn’t happened for months. yay.
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