Trying this in the old way. Not using the tablet, but just the small-ass Galaxy Note 5 phone instead. Like I used to. Thinking of getting a new, much smaller tablet, and leaving the fancy 12.2 monster at home. I never intended to carry that thing everywhere but that’s what I’ve been doing.
Planning a short trip and want to use my fancy Slappa bag, which has enough room to fit a week’s worth of clothing and several small babies should I find myself in a place with no other source of food.
A flurry of stimulating correspondences today got me feeling excitable about things, the future, the present, the weekend. I turned down an invite to come out for a booze or two, saying that I am not in that place again where I can drink one night and not the next. I may never be in that place again. Just leave me alone on the drinking for now.
And that woman from the dating site who I thought was such a dud is slowly turning out to be a generous soul, as best I can tell. She works long hours and comes home exhausted, as she describes it. Maybe looking forward to more of this but who even knows.
ANOTHER windfall, this one I would not exercise until mid year if ever, but enough to just make me laugh and laugh. It’s about as much $ as the last windfall, with which I will shop around for a new piano next week. I already know exactly what I want. Yamaha NU1. I should be able to get enough on trade-in to avoid a down-payment altogether, and from there I should qualify for an interest-free or very low-interest payment plan. My credit is still A+. Not spending money on beer and booze really does make certain things seem slightly more possible financially.
I gorged again on Gear VR stuff last night. This time it was roller coasters. Really fun, though it made me want to get on a real ride. I’ve had dreams of riding a coaster over the ocean, deep under water, and spiraling high into the air. These virtual coasters come close to that. There is that real ride in Europe that takes you across the countryside. There’s a bucket list thing.
Speaking of weird dreams I had one the other night. I was a low-level flunky in the Trump administration. The mood of the administration was like that of family. Casual and congenial, as Donald was in charge of everything and responsible for all. So no one did anything, to shield him from trouble.
A lot of people sat around the White House doing nothing, leafng through books without actually reading them or just grinning at their phones through the passage of 4 years time.
I puttered around the building, looking busier than the rest, but still doing nothing, just like everyone. I had left a pile of my laundry near the Oval Office for three days. I went to pick it up. Everyone made fun of me, including President Trump, who happened to be passing by as I gathered my clothes. He said something like “What’s the matter, you ran out of clothes at home?” Everyone laughed as I defended my sartorial inventory: “I have more clothes at home! What, you want me to just leave this here?” It was a good-natured, familial exchange.
I think that dream comes from having read something in the Times about how the Trump businesses have always been family affairs, with outsiders chosen carefully but not without a feeling of welcome embrace.
Remembering how, last year I guess, I wrote in this space that it would be crazy if the Trump Tower, my secret among secrets in midtown, became a focal point of the campaign, or even the presidency itself. How that has come to pass. Now I don’t want to go there anymore. The Flâneur refuses.
My goals for the next days are to consider ways to redefine the Flâneur in modern times. The past profile of the Flâneur (who was written about far more than I would have expected) seemed to assume wealth, privilege, introspective intelligence, and a certain aloofness that comes with being in the present but aware of its fibrous connections to the past. There is some of that in the modern Flâneur, but wealth is not a part of it, nor is leisure. Today’s Flâneur rarely enters a place where a purchase is expected as a condition of being allowed to sit in one place. Public spaces are the realm of neutral thought and high reflection (or vice-versa). Commercial spaces incur smegmatic anxiety in the lower gut of the Flâneur, who lingers outside such establishments whilst rarely entering.
The modern Flâneur differs as well from its ancestor in what I think is an interesting way.The old Flâneur never left his mark, never left a signal trace of his time spent strolling about town, collecting insights and observations but rarely dispensing of his wisdom. He was a bit of a hermit, albeit a public hermit. The modern Flâneur is of a similar mindset, but paradoxically trapped in the spotlight of the public century, sharing observations and discoveries on the open Internet regardless of whether one single soul is paying attention. The modern Flâneur’s absorption of historicity simultaneously smolders into public view.
Not at the ghetto coffee shop, since that horrible woman who talks shit about her own mother was there, hogging 4 of the 6 seats with her enormous ass and 5 handbags.This place might be better after all, on Broadway across from the ROYAL NAILS and a not-so-discreet happy endings parlor. Here I am, then, not staying true to the modern Flâneur’s æsthetic… because it’s fucking cold out. There are some public spaces I know of that are very well heated, and generally I can have them to myself should I choose to. Not going to tell you where they are but I might make one of them a destination tomorrow or Sunday.
I got a ski mask at the DII store on Broadway. At first I felt like an idiot wearing it but no one seemed to give a crap, and why would they? It was what I expected of a DII product. $2.99 and passable in windlessness. I ordered a fleece ski mask for $8.99, delivery probably Saturday. Much more efficient than a freakin’ octopus-like scarf, as much as I like the material of the 2 scarves I possess.
The idea of moving to Chicago had me thinking, what would I absolutely want to have in a new apartment, from the present one? Pretty short list, I think: King sized mattress, fancy microwave oven, 27″ piano sheet music tablet, computers (I guess)… and that’s about it. Everything else could go to the highest bidder. 70″ tv could probably get $500, old leather couch $50, mountain of books could get $5 per 10 copies. The old music magazines would either go into storage or else the copies from 1880s-1930s would come with me. But that’s leaning more toward storage and/or completely scanning and digitizing what copies I have not scanned already rather than having all that paper present in my new life.
I doubt I’d move to Chicago. I heard on the BBC last night about the Hobos and other gangs that are murdering indiscriminately. That is all in a specific part of town, of course. But it’s enough to make you go huh… Joe has lived in Chicago maybe 10-12 years and never once mentioned the gangs and murders. It’s like when the Chelsea bombing thing happened last year, I think the rest of America assumed New Yorkers were on edge, and in hiding when in fact everyone was like, what’s for dinner?
Still, the BBC story was eye-opening.
Not going to take a benzo tonight. That is a sign of progress, assuming I am able to get away with the absence of pharmaceutical and sleep something close to normally. I took one last night and felt as if it did absolutely nothing. So yay, my 3-day detox took 5 days but that’s to be expected when one does it on their own and not in a facility.
