Yesterday I was standing in line to see the Larry Wilmore show on the far west side when I was just overwhelmed by claustrophobia and depression. I had to get out of there and I did, proceding to spend the next hour or so wandering like a zombie around 11th avenue. I felt only a little bit disappointed with myself  for skipping the show, which I got a free ticket to on a late night whim while watching it on tv for the first time in months. I felt breath shortening and dizziness. That was around 5pm. I felt a little bad but Wilmore is hardly a hero of mine and I’ll be fine without that experience. It was just something to do, and I think that the feeling of being herded into the audience is what got to me. I was able to cancel the reservation, which they say you should do if you do not want to jeopardize chances of getting tickets in the future. I don’t know if I’ll try again but tickets appear to be very easy to come by, unlike certain other shows.

That was a bad day yesterday but I’m past it, and feeling close to normal in spite of this shitty weather, which would typically have me feeling sad.

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It is haunting to discover something of mine which I had absolutely no memory of creating, or more specifically of creating specifically for someone else. I think i said something similar a week or so ago regarding an old notebook I found, in which handwritten notes about my web sites filled maybe 50 pages. Today’s discovery was a little different.

Back in 2008 I started an on-again-off-again correspondence with an Italian woman. This was on Facebook. Before reconnecting today I don’t think we had corresponded for about 2 years. We have never met and probably never will. That’s fine with me, though I admit to feeling a little miffed in 2009 or 2010, when I learned after the fact that she had visited New York to see her son but neglected to let me know she would be here. It’s a long time Internet pet peeve of mine that people will bare their souls to you via text but draw the line at any kind of in-person encounter. I’ve gotten used to it, though.

I do not know a lot about her except that she is beautiful, married, about 10 or 12 years older than me, and that despite her less than stellar English she seems to have a way of saying exactly the right thing in a way that maybe fluent English could not convey. I remember how sympathetic she was regarding my first brain  MRI. I forget when that was now but maybe 5 years ago. She had had one too and said that she got to listen to classical music during her ordeal. I did not have that option at my first brain MRI, or if I did then the technician failed to inform me of it. Poor me!

I told her today that if I have learned anything about myself in the last year or so it is that I am a little boy inside, and I always will be. Her response should not have surprised me, considering her demonstrated ability to see right through me. She said she knew that about me almost from the moment we commenced correspondence, that I possessed a childlike innocence which she found sweet. It is the best mindset for creativity, she said, and that she also knew from the get-go that I was a vulnerable soul. She says now that she falls in love several times a day, sometimes for 5 minutes other times for 5 years. I do believe I knew that about her without her ever articulating it.

She asked today if I had a copy of a one-minute video I had sent her in 2008. I have zero memory of creating it but it is a short piano piece I wrote and dedicated to her. It certainly sounds like something i would have written, and it is obviously me playing it. It took some detective work to dig it up but I found it in my gmail outbox. It would have never occurred to me on my own to look for it there. Content of my outbox there shows that I have not sent anyone an email from gmail in 6 or 7 years. I still don’t understand why the video is not on my computer but whatever, she has it now and says she’s very happy on account of it. She said that she listened to it and watched it regularly but that somehow it was among a bunch of files that got deleted during a recent computer meltdown. It was a nice and inspirational bit of correspondence for me.

I told her I’d be leaving FB again soon, after reconnecting with a few people (herself among them) and after straightening out my fan page admin situation, which I seem to have accomplished already.

Announcing your planned departure from FB feels something like announcing one’s death. You just do not exist to some people outside of that ecosystem.

Now that I think of it I just remembered mentioning this video and correspondence to my friend Joe around the time it happened. He was quite taken aback that I made meaningful contact like this with strangers through Facebook, or anywhere on the Internet. Somehow that sort of thing has eluded him in life.

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Thinking about the Links again, which I guess I won’t revisit until Thursday, when this rain is supposed to abate. The devices are remarkably primitive, all things considered. The processor seems slow. The touchscreen interface is janky and unresponsive. I noticed a video of… I think it was de Blasio… using the device for a press event, and saw that he too had to hit buttons more than once to get them to go. Apparently it’s because there are three sheets of transparent material protecting the screen from abuse and grime. An editor at TheVerge commented on the screen’s unresponsiveness, which I was kinda gratified to hear. he suggested that no one would complain about it because hey, it’s free. I’m like dude, New Yorkers will complain about absolutely anything.

I did not know until today that these devices contain sensors that monitor atmospheric conditions, noise and other environmental readings. That’s kinda cool, for whatever information they are able to glean about global warming and the coming apocalypse. I’m just surprised that the calls I placed did not work, and I am puzzled by the openness of the loudspeaker, which places the voice of the person being called at the center of a very public conference call. I was happy with the lengthy story I wrote about the Links yesterday but need to polish it off a bit before Tweeting it to Citybridge, which is kinda ballsy of me but hey, gotta get myself out there more anyway.

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Yesterday, before the claustrophobia meltdown (which I just remembered was quite, quite bad), I visited one of the new phone booths on West End Avenue at 66th Street. it happens to be right outside my friend Alans apartment building, and he sent me pictures of it last week. It was cute, and a worthy replacement to the grimy, rusted-out booth of yore. Nevertheless I really don’t understand why they went to the trouble of replacing those old booths — and I really don’t understand why they programmed these payphones to be free phones without giving any indication on the phone itself that no coins are needed to make a call. I think this was intended to be a public relations “gift” to the city, but that hardly anybody cares.