The 59th Street Bridge today was littered with a notable quantity of smashed beer and wine bottles, and chicken bones. A lot of chicken bones. I tossed a number of chicken bones on to that span a few months ago, and noticed they were still there days later, being hauled off by armies of ants. The meat was being picked off by the Jaynesian amassment. It made me want to have my bones scattered on the bridge when I get out of this world’s way.

I left two batches of slides on the bridge today. One I photographed, the other I did not, because the other one was gone when I returned. That bridge is shaky, so it is possible they fell, but I don’t think so. If they fell they would land in and be visible in the space below, which appears to have no outlet to the river below. I have left other piles of slides at a thrift shop on Broadway in Astoria. They have a bin out front filled with giveaways. I drop my slides into that bin. I don’t know where they eventually go. If the store employees find them then maybe they try to sell them for a few bucks. If a passer by finds them then they might take them away. I have also left stacks of slides at other thrift stores, on the shelves. It feels like I am stealing something when I am doing the exact opposite, but I would think the stores find this behaviour annoying, or at least puzzling, but probably not all that unusual.

So far I have walked 12.29 miles this beautiful Tuesday. My therapist and I talked today mostly about a story I wrote. She seems to think I am an amazing writer. She kept reading off lines from the story, lines which sounded crude and twisted to me. It reminded me of the time I gave someone a framed print of one of my photos, and she sent me a photo of that picture hanging in her dining room. It felt crude, and vulgar, seeing my “work” hanging off a wall. It’s like my cock and balls were hanging there.

Speaking of cock and balls I noticed how the pitchers mounds at the baseball diamonds at the Queensbridge Houses look like giant vaginas. I have probably made this observation before but today they just looked more demonstratively vaginal than usual. I thought one of them looked like a giant anus but the rest were all clearly and undeniably giant vaginas smeared across the clay. I cannot look at them any other way now. The same is true of the Georgia Peach Diner on Queens Boulevard. Its signage uses the image of a giant peach, which looks like nothing else in God’s creation except a gaping, waiting vagina. Curses to my long ago friend J. for pointing that out to me. Any time I see that peach I think first of vagina, then of J. He would be flattered and amused to know this. He ruined for me a perfectly wholesome image of a peach and the fine dining establishment which it represents.

After seeing the anus and vagina pitcher’s mounds I concocted a hackneyed simile that sounded like something from a high school essay which got a letter grade of F: Her eyes were like anuses, deep and dark. Her eyes were deep and dark, like anuses. Or maybe a ham handed attempt at romance turns a gawky high school kid into the laughing stock of the dating scene when he tries to flatter a girl by telling her her eyes were deep and dark, like anuses. That sounds like something from “Porky’s”, or maybe “Diner”.

When not going through every word of my “too busy to die” story my therapist and I got to something I had mostly forgotten: The conversation I had with dad before he killed himself, and the details of the sermon given by the military priest at the funeral.

The priest called me before the service to ask general questions. I don’t remember everything he asked but he was duly attentive and seemed genuinely to care. I informed him that dad’s death was a suicide, to which he responded with generous thanks. He was not happy to hear it but for the purposes of his sermon he was glad to know. I thought this meant he was going to address the issue of suicide. I had spoken with a few people who knew dad, and those who said anything about the circumstances sounded confused. “Why couldn’t he just pick up the phone and talk to me?” one person asked. I chuckled a bit inside at the naivete but made no attempt to explain the logic of depression or my father’s  decision to cut short the indignities of a protracted death. I am not sure I had come to terms with his decision myself so soon after it happened.

I may have had in my mind a touching memory from college. Freshman year a woman in my dorm killed herself. I did not know her and so I did not go to the service, but I heard about it. The woman’s father delivered a speech which was described as pitch-perfect. He expressed his family’s grief but made a longer point of saying “Don’t blame yourelf. There was nothing you could have done. Depression is a disease.” I wish I knew his exact words because it made this sad and confused audience of young people feel profoundly better about what had happened. I wanted the priest at my father’s funeral to summon similar sentiments of empathy but he stuck to script. I don’t mean that as a criticism because he actually delivered a strong and convincing sermon. My sister and I commented for years to come how lucky we got with that guy. I just would have felt better for the others who came to the funeral if he had addressed the issue of suicide directly. In the interest of my father’s memory and legacy I think the priest could have said something to diminish the stigmas that most associate with suicide and depression, which a lot of people seem to think can be prevented and cured by a fucking phone call.

Whoosh, that memory just brought tears to my eyes. Yug, and I am sitting at a bar. I’ll go back to thinking about pitcher’s mounds and vaginas.

Oh, weird, someone with whom I conversed years ago about my father’s burial site just walked in to this bar. He (the person who just walked in) is from the town in Central Florida where Florida National Cemetery is located. It is the only thing for which that town is known. Its actual population is small and few people can actually claim to be from there. His name is also Mark. I will probably make small talk with him but I am no closer to social fluidity than I was a year ago.