I used to make up words like this. I still do but not for anyone else’s bemusement. I used to accuse a woman of spending too much time at the “Obsessional.” She thought it was funny. I didn’t mean it in a negative way. Just that she started with something utterly mundane and wringed as much rumination and mental cud-chewing from it as one human mind could possibly produce.
I woke up today thinking “There has been an abruption.” It felt like a solemn, definitive turn of phrase to express the moment of waking at 4:38am and knowing there would be no more sleep. No more sliding into insanity, down the lutes and chadders of the unconscious mad house. I did, in fact, make a few dips back into that buttery realm. But those dips were brief.
I took a clean, clean shower, in the newly mold- and gunk-free tub. The curtains still have some crud on them but I don’t mind those. I love my morning shower routine. It’s become an only joy some days. I remember bathing as a boy, before my penis was anything more than a thing that floated and that I could play with the same as a floating duck or a Fisher-Price boat.
I’m reminded of a song, I guess the genre would be “Lounge,” in which the singer slowly, somnulantly sings “I. Have. A Cat.” After several second of silence she belts out “OH YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!”
A friend and I found this song to be inane andlaughable, moreso when we substituted “COCK” for “CAT.” “I. Have. A Cock…… OH YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!” “AW MAN, CHECK IT OUT, THIS THING’S GREAT, DOES ALL KINDS OF FUN STUFF!”
But the bath experience once again has a newness to it, a pristine quality I never longed for but I’ll take it now that it’s here. THe only other fundamental and meaningful change to my daily ablutions came a few years back when I decided to sit in the shower. The day I started sitting I found that standing in the shower felt awkward and even reckless. So much easier to fall or slip when stnading compared to sitting. It was something I brought into the life of the Sperm Derm, the nickname I somewhat callously give her on account of being the only woman to ever make me jizz onto her face. It felt unnatural and wrong, but I can’t deny feeling happy to have checked it off my bucket list. It’s not a natural sexual act. The ancients didn’t do it. The ancients did everything we do from clamps and BDSM and suspension to every acrobatic position you can imagine. But they didn’t do that. They didn’t do facials.
But I digress. She brought that experience into my life and I brought the habit of sitting while showering into hers, something she had never done but would always do from then on. I was happy to know she took that from our otherwise orderly and stilted time together.
Nothing else to report. It is another day here at the bunker in Lower Manhattan. I played Glass and Bach at the 180 Maiden Lane public space on Saturday, to an audience of 3. Were they listening? I don’t even care. It’s just a bit of an eccentricity. I mean in this context, in this workplace, I doubt any colleague has ever ambled over to the public space and played on that Yamaha before going back to work. It is a gift that they leave that piano available, for free. Reminds me of my early years in New York, when the Yamaha showroom on 57th Street had every Clavinova and other lines of digital pianos set so you could go in, put on headphones, and play all day without bothering anybody. That is my most common concern at 180 Maiden, that someone will be irked or irritated by my playing. But no one seems to mind when the other person I’ve seen play there tears into her one-song repertoire, playing whatever that song is over and over.
Here is a picture from today.
Here is another, happier, photo from the morning trek to the subway. “ARICHOKE” sounds like a musical term, when a singer begins their aria but is interrupted by a competitive singer’s chokehold.
I’ve changed my approach to the subway. I go up to Broadway and buy a carton of strawberries or blackberries for breakfast, consumed not on the train but at the office. The walk up Broadway is considerably more alive than then sleepy, almost moribund trek across 35th Avenue, and sometimes 36th Avenue. Broadway feels like something is happening, something is starting. 35th Avenue, with only a newly-opened, sparsely populated diner open for business at 7am, is like walking to work in the dead of night. No fruit stands, the grocery store on 36th Ave opens late… Broadway, on the other hand, feels like the City is waking up. I guess it adds a minute to my commute but who cares.
