How many times do I sit down, say to myself “Say something“, then say nothing? Absolutely nothing. Neutron bombs storm in, vaporizing words and substance, leaving only this dull, torpid, emotionally bruised husk of a human body.

I feel safe now, without a woman in my life. Safer than I was with the last person, at least. I’m not supposed to talk about her, so I will not, even though I just did.

Thinking of travel. London looks boring. Maybe Switzerland or Iceland. Most likely I’ll end up on a day trip to Rutherford. I might go ahead and do that as soon as I cease typing these words. Round trip only eleven bucks, but with only 7 minutes to make the transfer at Secaucus.

Wow, that was weird. Moments after I typed that last paragraph the Twitter screen changed and showed that #Rutherford was trending. They’re talking about Rutherford, Tennessee. I, of course, was referring to Rutherford, New Jersey. So if that was a keystroke-logging-fueled hashtag intervention it missed its mark. Or did it? It got my attention. Earned not just my eyeballs but even a click.

CLICK!

An ex who remains and will always be special to me seems to have disappeared from social media. I don’t think she blocked me, though I would not be offended if she did. She has to be careful given her circumstances. But she would have blocked me on certain channels long ago if she ever intended to, and there would be no reason to do it now. This does not look like that kind of move from her. She’s gone not just from social sites but LinkedIn and other places.

She seems to have forgotten about her blogspot, which remains in state, but that’s been idle for years. She blocked me on Facebook years ago but I’m deactivated there now anyway. I seem to remember her family members showing up as suggested friends, which was weird because they were not supposed to even know I existed. Did I show up among their suggested friends?

I hope she is OK. If I maintain any concern it is over her ambivalence about getting vaccinated. She said she never leaves the house so why bother. This was in February, I think, maybe March of this year. She said this the very day I learned that another ex got Covid and had absolutely no idea how or where. She, too, never leaves the house. Even though she can go long on the drama sometimes I believe her when she insists that she had no idea how or where she got it.

I never identified where I got it but it was probably from the woman I was with from around August, 2020 (I think), until we decided Covid made our debaucherous romps too risky. We both got it anyway.

I think about her, not the debaucherous romp one but the one who just vanished from social media. I think of her but not so much to be symptomatic of regret or longing. I’m not like that. I do consider her one that I let get away. I could have tried harder to make her love me such that the cultural and racial differences didn’t make our parting of ways inevitable. But the years have softened the sting, or as much of that as there ever was.

I’ve continued my long, epic walks, using a different means of tracking mileage and routes. An Android app I’d been using started causing my phone to overheat to where it felt like a freakin’ blowtorch. So I switched to Google Tracking, which some people consider creepy and invasive but I don’t care. That ship has sailed, and they likely know ever place I eat, sleep, breathe, and fuck whether I deliberately allow them to track me or not.

Two days ago I walked from Astoria to Riverside Park and up to 101st Street in Manhattan. I might have walked back but for the time. I think it was after 4pm before I got to a train. I like to be home by 5pm.

I had expected to meet up with a friend passing through town but he had to cancel. Not his fault but annoying as hell. So I made myself useful and checked on the West End Avenue phone booths again, even though I did so within the last few months, making it unlikely anything would have changed.

Those phones no longer work and I doubt they ever will. CityBridge seems to have let its Verizon account lapse, and their phones, if they have dial tone, cannot make calls without going through American Roaming, a company that routes calls for unregistered or deactivated cell phones. I would have had to enter a credit card to complete a local call through a CityBridge payphone. I imagine the cost of that call would have been exorbitant.

According to the Big G I walked 9.1 miles on Thursday. I suspect the mileage was higher. That Google Timeline tracking stuff isn’t bad but I know it misses things. Last week it completely missed my walk of several blocks on Crosby Street in Manhattan. I know I was on that street because someone asked me what street we were on, and I knew because I had exited Bloomingdale’s through a door marked “CROSBY STREET EXIT.” But my path along that street is absent from that day’s map.

Here is Thursday’s map, which G says covered 9.1 miles walking and 7.2 miles by subway.

I may go to Rutherford now, or I may go to Calvary. I have never been through Rutherford, and have not been to Calvary in some months. I would like to know if Calvary opened or intends to open the chapel again. It has been closed since Covid, and an announcement to this effect used to be on their website. That announcement has been gone for months now but the chapel has remained locked for all my passages through there.

E-mails to the cemetery inquiring about this have been ignored.

I was wide awake at 3am today, until 4am, on a manic bout of cleaning and washing dishes. I woke to find I’d spilled a small amount of AJAX on the bathroom floor. No big deal but it’s enough to remind me that living with myself is like living with a ghost. I don’t always remember how things, my own human body included, got where they are.

I should be aware of how I get wherever I go this day, though. Despite the 3am madness I slept well, and hope you did, too.