Yesterday was a quick trip to Flushing Fields via M15 from Roosevelt Avenue. I thought Flushing Fields would be a new destination for me but in fact I had been there before, during one of my double-digit-mileage wanderments that consumed so many of my days, hours, and months. I sometimes ask myself what the hell was I looking for in all that walking. Maybe I’ll find an answer in the Guy Stagg book I bought last week. He talks about walking and making pilgrimages to religious destinations even though he has no religious inclinations or beliefs. It’s just about having a journey. Or is it? I’ll know more when I read the freakin’ book. I woke at 2am to a narrated version of the book, and it moved me. I was planning a big walk for the morning and to hear someone talk about the act of walking and its soul-searching character I knew I had to have the book. I start to think there is so much of New York I will never know, then I discover that one segment I thought would be new is in fact not new to me. But what does it matter? Why should I care that I’ll never know what happens behind every door, through every window and in every bedroom. I’d like to know everything, to sort them and draw broadstroke conclusions about the past present and future of this city. Or would I? Would I really just want to spy? Get a glimpse of lives being lived, some lived well others lived painfully. How is my life lived? Is it lived at all?
Had a tense, troubling dream about a tall, muscular, mentally unstable creep who started hanging out at my place of residence or work, it might have been both. He decided I was insane and crazy and would not let me forget this. It reminded me how my mother used to comment that I seemed to be a magnet for the kids who were slightly off mentally. We didn’t have any full-bore mentally retarded kids but there were some kids with their tweaks and twerks.
I thought I slept poorly but so far I feel fine today. I declined my offer to myself to do a couple of vodka shots to get back to sleep at 1am. I think that was a good thing, even if it meant not sleeping a full 7-8 hours and instead lightly waking through dreams of a big dumb guy threatening me with physical assault. I had a huge boner when I finally woke up at 6am. This tends to signal that I slept well and am feeling healthy.
With the usual dosage of BP meds and panic pills I gues I’m feeling serene. But mid day brings on the wave of internal agita. I don’t know what it is but I briefly find that I want to climb out of this body and into another atmosphere. Today I’ll try and keep it calm. It happened yesterday, too, while not at the workplace. So I don’t think it’s existential ennui about the job specifically. Just a flow of the body and soul.
