Counting down to Star Wars. Or as my mother and I palindromically called it: Satr Wars: Raw Rats. I’m stoked to see it, hoping my adrenaline does not let up between now and showtime.

Sleep has been brutal this week. I have to set aside 11 hours to get maybe 6 hours of semi-unconsciousness. Body has ben screaming at me to do something differently so I gave up on the booze for a week. My metabolism has been in overdrive. I cannot stop eating, yet I do not seem to have gained a pound. Ysterday was insane. I think I ate a bag of Sour Patch, a chocolate bar, and a huge cup of coffee, all within less than an hour. I took the anxiety pills for a day but i just don’t think those make all the difference I have assumed they did all this time. I’ve been going along with that class of pill since they gave it to me at the hospital but really I think a more general regimen is in order. Or maybe not. I am hesitant to ask my PCP because he started giving me attitude about my drinking, and I don’t need to ruffle his placid, peaceful feathers.

Maybe it’s a matter of running, exercising, getting more exhausted than I do from simply walking double-digit miles in a day when running half that distance would work my heart much better.

I am at the Concourse of Rockefeller Center, adjacent to the skating rink and walking distance to my 181. Very drafty at this particular spot. All I’m thinking about is seeing Star Wars, can’t help it. I bought the ticket in November, thinking that opening night would be a lot of fun. But I changed my mind, deciding I wanted to see the film as a film, not as a party where people are all dressed up in costumes and wielding their light sabers. nothing wrong with that, just not my style of movie going. Plus I accidentally booked the ticket at a local theater where in the past I have horrible experiences with the air quality, so much so that I had to leave and I don’t think I ever made it all the way through a movie there, at least not recently. I remember seeing that Russell Crowe/Al Pacino movie about 60 Minutes and the smoking industry but that was way long ago. This theater is new, or at least new to me. Ah, who gives a shit…

I wanted to see Star Wars yesterday but no good time was available. I did not want to see it on a weekend, when crowds would be densest. But I don’t know that it will be showing much longer so I wanted to see it soon so I can have a chance to see it again should I be so inspired.

Sitting at a table with 4 empty chairs.An Asian group was sitting here momentarily but they moved on. They were screaming at each other, pounding the table and absolutely screaming what sounded like Japanese. That lasted about a minute. Subsequently a blakc gentleman asked if he ould use one of the empty chairs — as if I own this table, or have somehow assumed authority over it by virtue of seinority. That is a subject for a magazine for which I am thinking of writing a short piece or two, but the deadline is soon. The theme of the magazine is shared space, and the conflicts of ownership versus sharing… or something like that. It fits into my story idea for a registry of what companies occupied specific street addresses, and what individuals occupied houses and apartments in the past. The data, though incomplete and chaotic, is out there, just not readily assemblable. The magazine seeks essays, poetry, photos, whatever, as long as it fits that theme.

A Japanese family
(one assumes they are family)
sits down, no questions asked of me.
With no English words spoken and my
attentions splintered by a pacing carousel ofhumans I best surmise that this
family sat down to hate on each other, to
punch the table and punctuate their words with
spittle and wobbly-eyed stares of death.
As if fitting into a rhythm they
quickly dispatch, leaving me at the
moistened table alone. A janitor,
unaware of the moistness, I would think,
wipes the table clean as an
African-American gentleman asks me
“May I use this chair?”
“Go ahead!” I reply, as if I own the place,
as if my 4:30pm arrival on this spot gives me
seinor authority over this circle of space.
As owner of this space I should demand
identification, so that I can keep a roster of
all who sat here during my tenure.
It would assemble strangers who retrocatively
passed in the afternoon transient drainage ditch of the
Rockefeller Center Concourse, passing as we do but
choosing to stop at this spot, unaware that I am
assembling the into an alumni association
from which they can never resign.

=====
Something like that. Going to the NYPL, way too drafty in here.