It might not go down as the strangest bit of kismet in my life but it has me asking, yet again, if this kind of thing happens to me more often than other people, or if I just pay more attention to such things. Kismet, you might call it. Or just a harmless dollop of nothing?
The president of the machines lives in Queens. She lives in Astoria. She lives one block away from me. I just crossed paths with her at the Key Food on 36th Avenue. She was so close in front of me, and I was staring at her so intently to be sure she was who I thought she was, that I
abruptly turned around, since after all she might recognize me. She would have had every reason to stop and ask wtf I was staring at her for.
She exited the store ahead of me and I thought I’d lost her after my checkout seemed to take an eternity, but I caught up with her, thinking how extra weird it would be if she lived in the same building as me. She passed my building and I got stuck waiting for traffic, suddenly agonizing over having to wait the 30 seconds or however long the traffic light lasts while she walked on toward Broadway. If she lived in one of the houses on this street I would not be able to discern which one.
Anyway, out of nothing more than random curiosity I maintained my pursuit, not for anything particularly weird. I was just curious where the president of my obsession lived, if it was a crazy expensive place (not a whole lot of that around here) or a dump. I don’t know what you’d call it but it’s a 2-story house on one of those in-between avenues that a lot of native Astorians think does not exist.
It must be that she walks right past my window every single day. It’s crazy because just today and yesterday I was focusing my attentions on her, scrolling through her Twitter feed to see if she’s as much of a phony as I thought, and trying to figure out how she got this job when she blatantly appears to have no idea how those machines work and what they can and cannot do.
She had said somewhere on social media that she lives in Queens but I never thought twice of it. Saying you live in Queens is like saying you live in America.
I was also remembering earlier today in a stream-of-conscious about how someone on YouTube commented on her part of the
CBS piece last year as being “cringeworthy”, and I agree after just watching a bit of it again.
Now, I’m not intending to do anything with this knowledge, though figuring out if she frequents any places around here that have machines outside is a tempting possibility. I mean you’d think she might frequent such places just to be close to her pride and joy, right? It would be
absolutely boss to set off a machine when she is sitting right next to it. Not a likely scenario but an artist can dream. I have no intention of staking her out, even though it would be eerily convenient that I happen to walk past her house just about every single day on my way to lighting up the Broadway machines.
Visions of me standing outside her house dressed up in a Mr. Softee costume are hard to shake, though. Hah.
When the first Gothamist story posted I remember comments from people suggesting this had some connection, in spirit if nothing else, to the mysterious appearances of clowns around the country. I had heard about the clowns but didn’t think much of it. My guess, as far as this president person goes, is that she is blissfully unaware of or insulated from what I’m doing with her machines. Now if I was a smooth operator I might have asked her at the Key Food “Are you ___?” From there I could have talked my way into her getting me a job at the company, but I think I’m too far gone for that.
It’s amazing to me how perfectly this near-encounter fits the æsthetic of my project, with an invisible presence hovering over the machines, and now hovering directly in the face of its president. But aside from the bit of kismet I don’t find the fact that she lives a block away to be anything more than a fine little amusement.
