A day spent wandering Northern Boulevard, sharing the company of a rat in an abandoned subway station, discovering an oddly-located hipster coffee shop, and forgetting (through the thud of an unexpected hangover) what has happened here.

Ed Koch/Queensboro Bridge traffic was backed up to Steinway Street.

My shoulders and ass were sore from overexertion at the gym.

My right eye (in particular, the right eye) was red as a tomato from the early morn’s vodka to the mouth and the early afternoon’s shampoo to the orb.

Some of us are lucky as hell. Others of us are the “I” of the storm: if it didn’t happen to me then it didn’t happen, but O! the inconveniences. Let us complain! Let us prepare our litigation!

I thought my interests had been spared but at around 11:30am Wednesday an explosion somewhere on the Internet caused my websites and the sites of thousands of others to disappear, disappear from the Intertubes.

I lost money by the hour but my cash-hemorrhages are insignificant compared to what others lost.

Sometimes I wish that this thing I do was still just a hobby. This used to be something I came home to. Now I leave home to get away from it.

I got fired from corporate after 9/11 and since then I wandered desultory up/down a path where my livelihood relies on a public network, the network of networks, a capacious public space which offers no guarantees and no insurance.

Mine is the house that payphones built.

I can say that inasmuch as I have a house.

I overheard some youthy hipsters on the Upper East Side a few weeks ago, all of them white and expensively-dressed and obviously the spawn of indiscriminate wealth. One of them announced “I don’t understand how you can call this your house.” He was referring to the fact that his buddy lived in an apartment. Not a house. Possibly not even a home. Just a room.

Mine are the rooms that payphones built. Is this my house? Is this even my home? How can I call this anything?