So if that is not something to lose sleep over then I do not know what is. Should just let it slide, but it summons the issue I was never quite able to get across to the therapist last year. All of us are a single bad line of computer code away from having all our shit blasted into the public domain. In this case I took an alternate route to creating that possibility, one which might take years to create any consequences, however unlikely the possibility. I mean, what’s the kid going to do if he really did get those hard drives and take them home? Hawk them on eBay? Those drives are so old I don’t think you could get a dime for them. And maybe I was smart enough to clear the drives of data but I don’t think I was. Earlier drives I knew to have nothing but Usenet downloads of piano music and maybe some porn. Nothing identifiable to me. These drives might be different but I have no way to know. Yowza. It’s just kind of insane to me that the scenario I thought was so remote appears to be exactly what happened. I guess if it seemed outrageous to me it’s because it is something I would never do myself. I do remember seeing someone down on the riverbed a couple of years ago. He was at the far other end, which actually looks a little more hospitable to people who for whatever reason want to walk around down there. I don’t know what he was looking for but I thought he was probably looking for sea creatures, for food. Or maybe he was just picking for scrap. I should have considered that before doing what I did with these drives.
Sitting at the ghetto coffee shop. I’d eaten barely a thing for 4 days but I gorged last night on a gyro platter from Aliada. Now I think I want to quit drinking for a while, though I feel OK today. Yesterday was like death warmed over. I was up and about at 3:30am, making a farce of myself on Facebook and swilling vodka shots with water chasers. The water seems to lessen the blow considerably. Erm, duh, of course it does.
Something else that is fueling my anxieties are memories of an unsettling encounter I had with a woman I met at a bar last week. It’s too weird to go into, since she might be reading this, though I doubt it. But it’s left me thinking up some fearful possibilities of what could have happened. I mean, really. Just let it go that I left the place contemplating complete silence, and that that kind of silence is terrifying.
Beware, young man, of a woman who sits alone at a bar.
I had an amusing conversation with someone last night about the word “PORNO” as the crass alternative to “PORN.” To my surprise this person had an opinion on the matter, saying that he watched a lot of daytime television and that if this window on American humanity is any indication then the usage of the letter O appendage on PORNO seems to be a southern black affectation. I never would have thought that but it is not a matter I was expecting to research with any vigor. Vigoro.
I am restless yet lazy, as ever. It seems the only thing I can do any more is walk. Just go walking, for hours. It’s a catharsis I’ve performed in times of anxiety and emotional disarray. I was actually happy (in a way) to learn that others do the same thing. A coffee shop barista I was friendly with said that after a big breakup he went out walking for double digit miles and double digit hours. Somehow on that journey he got blood poisoning, which he described as being almost unheard of these days.
I’ve had strange portents lately that there is enough chaos and randomness waiting to happen that I should have been hit by a bus or mowed down by a bicyclist several times already. I remember the day a couple of years ago when a car came within one goddam inch of hitting me. Obviously you can’t sweat this kind of stuff. You take a risk every time you get out of bed in the morning, as the trackworn cliché goes.
But lately I am plagued by a feeling of doom. It is the silence of things, that syrup of portent that I think haunts 37th Street near Northern Boulevard. Today, though, everything looked beautiful. I wanted to fuck everything I saw.
Going out walking.
