Yesterday was an utter waste. I bought perfunctory groceries (beer and cheese), and spent other parts of the day shopping for food, asking myself why. Why? I feel better with a hunger high than I feel after eating a soulless, flavorless Subway Sandwich shop creation. At present I am eating strawberries, which tend to make me feel better. Serene, perhaps. These are especially good ‘berries today. But I should not have come to work today. I don’t want to be here. I need to find something that will make me happy. I asked myself repeatedly en route to work today: “What would make me happy?” “Can anything make me happy?” I cleaned the apartment a bunch with my 2 extra days off. Seeing the clean bathroom sink does bring a small slice of happiness. I like to look at clean things. I gravitate toward cleanness.
I had a thing happen. I nearly lost balance. I got dizzy in the middle of a street. It was on an uneven piece of pavement. I thought I would fall but I stayed standing. I held on to a lightpost. This exact behavior has happened before, sending me to needless brain MRIs which reveal nothing, and recommendations for psychiatrists that I either ignore or find wasteful.
I wandered Flushing yesterday, accomplishing nothing. I stood on the 2nd floor of a Duane Reade, overlooking the street below. So many lives I will never know or even understand. So much of New York I will never see even as it passes me by, sometimes right in my face. The time spent on the 7 train was wasted, reading garbage news articles which do nothing more than summarize discussions on TikTok. Writers get paid to just copy and paste other peoples’ conversations.
I feel like a child today. Maybe I will behave like one, but probably not. I am skilled at maintaining appearances. Yesterday I also wandered Astoria, finding things to report to 311. I found 2 things. One public litter bin had been plowed down by a vehicle. Amusingly, people are still putting trash in it. But the bin is smashed almost flat. I reported that, and will pass by that location again until the 5-day period of time the DSNY needs to inspect has passed. Then I will see the results of my good citizenship, ideally in the form of a replacement bin, and if that comes to pass I will feel a small seed of happiness. I probably did not need to report that. DSNY empties those bins regularly and would have found this one not long after I reported it. But by filing a complaint I guess it makes it a little harder for them to just ignore it, as they might do.
Another item to report was the absence of a pedestrian crosswalk signal at an intersection I frequently pass. The signals are completely gone, leaving just a bare pole. That’s not a safe condition, but will likely take some time to remedy.
Contact with other humans would go a long way toward feelings of happiness. I work with people and make conversation but it’s limited and one must be careful about trusting people you work with. Some people here are COVID deniers and vax conspiracy theorists. I don’t see myself getting anywhere with those types.
I went to Staten Island on Tuesday. That was a small adventure. In search of payphones at an old diner on Forest Avenue. I took an S48 bus from St. George. The bus was quite crowded with all kinds of people. Dark, white, Asian, seemed like everything/everyone. I found the payphones and made a relatively quick trip of it. The Ferry boat did not make me seasick as it has in the past. A musician performing at St. George ordered me not to record his performance. I didn’t really want to anyway but I obliged. I’ve never seen that from a live performer but maybe it’s more common than I think.
I considered returning to Staten Island again on Wednesday but it didn’t happen. Too cold. I planned to spend the day on subways and buses, in the heat. But then a 7 train got delayed for 20 minutes and the doors were left open during that time. It was very cold and windy, and I found myself hating life for that seemingly endless span of time inside what I had anticipated would be a well-heated subway trip.
Wandering Flushing, every step felt like futility. The cold didn’t help. Normally I don’t mind the cold but I was feeling cold to my bones yesterday.
