My blood pressure has never been anything I needed to worry about until about a year ago. Maybe 2 years. All those years run together like days to me now. If ever I thought to check it before my only real concern was that the BP was so low I had to double check to be sure I was actually alive. In high school and college (why was I even checking my BP back then?) I remember it being in the 90/60 ranges, and that doctors oohed and aahed at how low that was. Today I am back to normal, and that is even according to one of those in-store BP machines that systematically inflate your numbers. I was thinking that it took a while for me to get back to normal but really it took about a week. No booze for almost 2 weeks now but planning a get-together with a friend next week to celebrate a variety of things. Among them would be my new coffee table. Hell yeah, let’s tear it up for new furniture, bitches. I got a deal on that sucker. I talked the nice ex-con lady at the thrift shop down to $100 on a table that looks like something for which that store would normally charge double that price. <<what a horrible sentence
I feel not a lot better or even different for being sober a couple of weeks. My brain feels like it did in school:
buzzing. Interminably buzzing, and filling with sand.
Next week’s get-together should be the first direct human contact I have with another member of the species, save for cashiers and store clerks and the like. I’ve been wandering around, looking into people’s windows, wondering what is going on in those living rooms and lavish residential spreads that seem to bustle with more life than my domicile. i remember a woman who used to call APOLOGY to confess that she was a voyeur, and that she sought out spots where she could discretely camp out for hours and look into people’s windows and back yards. She mever mentioned taking photographs or video (this was early 1990s). She just wanted to watch. i remember how she said it. She said “I just wanted to get a glimpse.” She seemed to be reaching for that word: “Glimpse”. I think she wanted a stronger word than that but if she did she never arrived at it while talking to Apology, and I cannot get enough into her head to think of what that word or phrase might have been.
I saw a “For Sale” sign on a house on my block, just 4 or 5 buildings over from where i live. I would not buy that particular building because I think it is cursed. Years ago I came home at 4am and saw a small army of law enforcement and crime scene personnel gathered outside that house. As I later learned the police had hours earlier captured someone driving around near JFK with a van full of explosives, including grenades, shoulder-fire missiles, and general ordnance. He was detained and when hi place of residence was revealed to be on 29th Street in Astoria the authorities quickly moved in, finding an upstairs apartment filled to the rafters with explosives, firearms, and enough of an arsenal for a one-man army to invade and conquer Woodside.
The dude was a disturbed military vet, I think from Vietnam. He was Greek, and had lived upstairs from his Greek family for double-digit years without speaking to them once.
Heck, maybe I would want to live in that house. It’s a great story. Except I don’t know what happened to the dude upstairs or if he could ever make his way back to the house.
I thought of buying a house around here after walking around some and, out of nowehere, feeling like this was home, and that I would be perfectly content to spend the rest of my life here on 29th Street or somewhere nearby. There is something to which I should aspire. I could pillage my 401(k) for a fat down payment on almost anything that opens up around here, but I’d need more financial basis to support the ongoing expenses. At first I think that I would not want to make such an investment on my own, but if I think about it for half a second I realize that going solo on a real estate purchase is exactly the way to do it.
But that’s just mental masturbation.
Speaking of cursed houses I heard firecracker type sounds and small explosions coming from the house a couple of doors north of me. it’s a house where a Muslim family lives, or at least I think it’s a Muslim family. A few weeks ago I heard those small firecraker popping noises and I looked out the window to see a bunch of kids on bicycles racing away, screaming. A half hour later I went outside and saw a polcie car parked outside the house. It must have been a hate crime. I’ve heard that hate crimes are the new street cred among today’s hooligans and guttersnipes. it must happen an awful lot more than gets reported. An incident last month in Crown heights, where a school bus was firebombed, got a lot of press because it was reocrded on surveillance. Most of these incidents go unreported.
Can’t take this ghetto coffee shop any more, someone is absolutely screaming into his fucking cell phone just a few feet away from me.
