I just thought of another experience of mine to file under the “What Are The Odds?” category. I was talking to Dan at Sunswick, in what I think was our first conversation. He had moved here from a tiny town in Texas, where he worked in the trucking business. I mentioned that I had done some web development work for Grote, a company well-known in the trucking business but not outside that realm. He knew that web site well. In fact he singled out for praise a calculator on that web site that showed you how much money you could save by switching to LED light bulbs. As soon as he started describing that calculator I interrupted with “Oh my God I wrote that calculator.” Then I said something like “So you’re the one who used it.” I kept an eye on web traffic to that site and that calculator in particular got minimal, and I mean minimal usage. What are the chances that one of the few people who ever used that calculator would come to New York from a remote Texas town and end up sitting next to the person who created it? I mean, I don’t know…. And I don’t know if things like this really do happen to me more than other people, or if I am just more aware of them.
At that same bar I met RIta. We’d been talking for a while when she stopped and, suddenly acting shy, said “I have to tell you something.” I asked what. She almost inaudibly whispered “I love your receipts.”
And then there was Thomas, who I mentioned previously. He would never have known he was talking to the receipts guy if his name was not Thomas.
…
I went out to Flushing today for no damn reason except maybe to look at the pretty girls. The Skyview Mall (I think that is what it’s called) was hoppin’. It’s bigger than I remembered it, and I do not remember there being a Target or Best Buy at that place. Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue are pedestrian hell holes.
I pulled off my favorite MTA hack, which is to take a train one way and get a free transfer for the bus back. Or vice-versa.
I am at a place with a strange name: GULLUOGLU BAKLAVA.
Slept 13 hours Friday, maybe 11 last night. I think all the coding I’ve been doing has made my head explode. My brain is my biggest muscle. Using it can be exhausting.
That’s weird, there’s a little kid who hangs out at the ghetto coffee shop, which is not exactly next door to this place I’m at now. That kid just walked by. Earlier I waved hello at one of the barber’s at the haircut place I don’t go to anymore. Feels like a small town, this AsLIC.
…
Now it is Monday, the hot day. My a/c really sucks. The bedroom one is useless, since it makes a horrible groaning sound now. The other one is just old.
Outside I saw someone wearing a jacket and a tie. No shirt. Was strange.
Wrote a couple of stupid stories for the payphone site. It’s become, I now realize, the sort of thing that I don’t want to write about because I don’t think anybody but myself cares. I wish there could be a reckoning for this stuff in which I understand what people think about me on account of my enduring interest in the subject matter. Phil, when I was down in Tampa, stuck to his policy of ignoring any mention I make of the word. Others are like that, too.
But writing those stories today felt winsome, and sad. Depressing, even. A silence took me over. I had to get out, and I did. A silence has been taking me over for a long time now.
This would be a fine day to sit at the St. Michael’s Mausoleum, assuming the a/c is as strong as it has been in the past. But of course I would have to get there, and the stretch of road from here to there is a desert in terms of places I could duck into for a dose of air conditioning.
I was trying to shore up reminiscences about Apology and PRAY but I just came up lifeless and pitifully uninterested. I should just get on a bus again, like I did yesterday. Just watch the people walking by and the buildings going past. Good a/c, too, especially if you get just the right seat.
I put on these noise cancelling headphones yesterday on the bus. I don’t think I’d ever done that — on a bus, that is. The difference was profound. It cancelled out almost everything but then had the strange effect of making the bumpy parts of the ride seem kind of surreal.
And last night these headphones may have cancelled out a noise I thought was unkillable: The doorbell. It’s a buzzer that could wake the dead but either the delivery guy rang the wrong buzzer or these headphones swallowed that shrill noise. The weird thing was I could hear him knocking on the door itself (someone let him into the building) and that’s a far more muffled, subtle sound than that damn buzzer.
I wonder if I’ll hear the air raid sirens when the Russkies invade.
I really should not be doing this, writing into oblivion. Oh wow, that woman is beautiful. I am at the library, where I don’t think I’ve checked in for a while. Some of the same familiar faces. I always forget that they let you bring coffee or beverages into this library. The main branch of the NYPL does not allow that. But then they have centuries-old documents and such to keep stain-free. Nothing at this place is particularly ancient, as far as I know. Except for me. Hah.
There’s a video game I play — FIshdom — in which you basically just blow stuff up. You use TNT, lightning, and other things. The big kahuna weapon is represented by a round nuclear symbol. I wonder if the makers of that game have received complaints about that, saying it’s tasteless. Remember Hiroshima! They do not go the full nuclear route by invoking a mushroom cloud. That would be something. There must be games that do that, though. Somewhere someone finds that offensive, but that someone is not me and that somewhere is not here.
Just thought of that when I looked up and saw a book on the library shelf. The book is named HITLER.
I read a short story last week, written by someone whose apartment building was taken over by a new owner. I couldn’t tell if it was fictional or not, but the new owner was evidently a money-hungry type who forced out older tenants, even those with stabilized leases. It made me wonder, if Tom ever does sell the building, what kind of impact it could have on those of us with long-time leases. I mean, legally nothing should change but a piece of shit landlord can make your life miserable in other ways. I cannot afford to move, though I could stand to at least consider moving on from New York. It’s a big country out there. My apartment is fine but it’s not exactly magnificent, or something worth holding onto ‘til death do us part.
I wish I had help with the rent but I guess you can’t have some things in life.
I am starvated. I never seem to last as long at the library as everyone else, nor am I ever able to concentrate as fully as them. But then I am not really doing anything productive, am I?
