The Tom Kaminski Eye in the Sky experience is harsh. I don’t listen closely, since I don’t drive or have reason to care about traffic conditions on the highways and byways. I hear him out in anticipation of the weather report that follows. But his voice, so acerbic and tight, and the compact, crushing sound of the chopper blades rumbling just inches above his head creates a mental illusion of a man who is one with his helicopter, a single being made of human stuff, but with landing pads, chopper blades and requisite connectivity to make his brain power the blades. He is a propeller head on steroids.

In my morning grog I hear him refer to “The Apartments,” a reference I usually assume to be the buildings I lived in in the 1990s, in Washington Heights, right next to the GWB. Those buildings should be renamed “THE APARTMENTS”. But he might refer to some other set of apartments, I don’t know, but I like to think it’s a shoutout to my Washington Heights past, where I would sit at the open window and greet drivers below with a toast, a salute, and a swig of Bud Light, or maybe I was on Bud Dry in those days.

I don’t listen to Kaminski’s words closely enough to know but maybe he’s more of a poet than I would have given credit. Today he kind of blithely referred to traffic conditions “On the Yonkers side of things”, which I found poetical and nuanced in a way unexpected from a traffic reporter. Maybe his morning surveys are frilled with such graces, a poet in the sky disguised as a traffic reporter.

There is a Joe Frank segment, I believe also called “Eye in the Sky”, where Joe starts out reporting traffic as one would expect, then evolves toward describing scenes of war and existential chaos. Or that’s how I remember it. It was the kind of riff that could go on forever. I think one bit was something like “We have a small army of machete-wielding gorillas at Hollywood and Vine, so stay away from there.”

Probably not those words but that spirit. It’s one of the segments that make you remember that for all his serious-sounding stuff Joe Frank was, essentially, a comedian.

But Kaminski today had me asking about the Yonkers side of things. What does that mean? How are things different on the Yonkers side of things…

…

I realized I seem to have subscribed to the TikTok of the woman I see on the subway. We’ve never spoken, but I figured out who she was and became a fan. That is all. I keep her at a distance, but I think she took note of me following her and must be full of questions as to how I even found her there. It was through her blog, I guess, but I never intended to connect my attentions paid to her to my real identity. Seems I did just that. Whoops. It might not be the first time. I seem to remember a drunken post to IG that I quickly deleted, if I ever posted it at all.

Following people like this is a hobby of mine. I identify people because I find people interesting, and I like getting to know what guides them. I once made what you’d call a dossier on people who live in my building, accumulating as much public information as I could. I did nothing with this information. Just accumulated it. I do that. I accumulate. I’m what Garrison Keillor had in mind when he jokingly, bitterly named a fictional high school literary magazine “CUMULUS.”

…

I’m at the job, trying to rekindle the joy I felt in being here, being among people, working again. I mean I always work but this felt different. Orgasmic. But I find it stressful and monotonous. Futile, even. I’d rather be at a bar right now, even at this early hour, not to drink but to talk and make out. I get nostalgic for the encounter with the woman who decisively and purposefully grabbed me by the crotch. She was a keeper… for a few hours. I left her snoring like a freight train before going to Calvary Cemetery at sunrise. Never saw her again.

I feel fine today. Don’t know why. Sleep was a squalid affair. In the near total darkness I could not tell where I ended up on the bed. But I sprawled, ending up I think on the far other side, almost on the floor.

I lowered Lorazapam from 2mg to 1.5mg. That seems to have prevented a certain loopiness in me. That’s some potent shit, man. Really. Surprised how cheap it is. Less than a buck a pill. With insurance it’s $1.29 for 30 pills.

Yes, I feel fine. Two days without successful Morning Mas might have left a central kind of energy, a central poise that is not exhausted of itself prematurely and needlessly. Yesterday’s failed Mas was pornless, pure body, wet with spit and scents of self. Today I listened to a professional masturbator, one of my favorites, but didn’t watch much. I had to shave face and that takes extra time and closed eyes.

I’ve arranged and rearranged my shower several times. Because I sit in the shower I can mostly dispense with shower curtains, but I keep them in place anyway. Sitting reduces water splattering all over, at least I think it does. This week’s new surface for surrounding myself with porn and pills is the small trash can stuffed between the bathtub and the sink. It was put there by an ex-girlfriend, unasked for and unclear in purpose by my estimate. It was for storing bottles of shampoo and tubes of toothpaste, as if there was not already cabinet and vanity space for such things. At present it contains a bottle of shampoo from at least 6 years ago.

But I started using its lid as a surface. Today I placed a coffee cup and a small dish of pills for consumption after the shower. I feel like the BP pills would try and do combat with the effects of running hot water over my body, not to mention the vigors and rigors of Morning Mas, which amounted to nothing today. So far, that is. I am no stranger to doing it here, at the place of work. Discretely, of course.

But I save the pills for after the shower. I used to save them for here, at the desk. But that seemed odd to me, a morning ritual of popping pills the moment one reaches his place of work.

It’s time to work and the mood here is festive.