I am sitting on a shaded bench at New Calvary, where fall foliage seems somewhat out of place on what feels like a nice summer day. It is 82 degrees and humid. Not at all Fall-like.

A cemetery seems strangely appropriate for me. I am starting to think that cracking my head open last week could have landed me here. It is OK now. The soreness is completely gone, or maybe I just think it is. It healed quickly in the first day, and it never started bleeding again. I thought showering and spraying hot water on it might cause it to breech. But it never did. As always, I heal well. It’s just a little different when it’s your fucking head that is bleeding. I had felt slightly dizzy but I blame that on not eating. And the side of my head on which I landed felt sore down to the shoulder but that has to be on account of the increasingly heavy bag I carry around.

Not to worry, I guess. I’m alive. But that somewhat moribund photo of blood all over my face was something of a wake up call. I have not told anyone about this.

I am going to the Columbarium. I just saw a couple of youngish women pass by. I seldom see any humans here. When I do they are usually older. hah, there just passed a yellow cab. I wonder how many cabbies take passengers to the boneyard.

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At the columbarium, looking at niches for Jorge A. Jimenez, 1938-2014; Sandra M. bada Diaz, 1944-2016; Olga Riccio, 1932-2011; and Dennis F. Fay, 1956-2016. Most of the niches here are blank, but that does not mean they are not being sold. People just have not died yet. I want to get niche #181.

Came out here for no good reason today save for the weather, which is supposed to go to hell soon enough. This feels too weirdly like Summer I feel at peace this day. The last few days were a mix of anticipation and good times.  Better times to come, too.

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Now I am at Old Calvary. it is too beautiful a day to do anything else but walk. The smell here is of flowers and motor oil. The rise of the new Kosciuszko has been something to behold. There are only two towers, though. I thought there would be four. Maybe there will be.

The trek through West Maspeth is always intriguing. Lots of cranes,  usually plenty of activity during the weekdays, all as a handful of tiny houses stand with conspicuous stubbornness. No luxury high rises are likely to stomp out that segment of industrial grit. I am going to sit in the chapel for a bit after I take a dump at the bathroom here. The door to this bathroom is not always open. What a golden opportunity!

I am near the monument for Lorenzo Daponte, Mozart’s librettist. He is not actually here. Or is he… now I can’t remember if he was buried in a pauper’s grave here or at Woodlawn.

I played some Mozart before heading out today. I found an anthology of German keyboard music I did not know I had. Mozart was Austrian, no? Whatever. German tradition. I will explore the lesser Baroque composers. I found some decent stuff by Frohberger, and realized how little attention I’ve given to Handel. Any of these guys, however great they were, pale in comparison to J.S. Bach. But that shouldn’t mean they go neglected. Handel in particular was a damn good composer but his keyboard suites just don’t hold a candle to Bach. It’s just amazing, no matter how deep you dig in to Bach’s contemporaries and those who came within a hundred years before or after you just cannot find anyone who equals anything Bach did. Handle was interesting to me for a while when I read that he may have had cyclothymia — I think that is how it is spelled. Van Gogh may have had it as well, and Schumann is said to have had the condition. Cyclothymia “sufferers” can be prone to drastic mood swings, but they are also prone to long outburst of creative work, followed by equally long periods of no creative work to speak of. Schumann wrote hundreds of songs, and I forget the anecdote but there was a period of one month or two where he wrote a good percentage of those all in one sitting. Handel is said to have written The Messiah in a period of days, holed up in his work space with no human contact.

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8.2 miles later I am at the ghetto coffee shop. What am I doing with my life? I am walking around a lot. Feeling OK. Sweating.