Yesterday is probably the first time I ever let this happen. I’m not sure. It’s not something for the record books or historical epochry. But I believe I neglected to rinse the shampoo/conditioner out of my hair upon showering, leaving my hair standing pretty much straight up and feeling a little gooey. It was a strange feeling. At the end of the day I detected a blob of… something on my forehead. It had to be some residue from the shampoo/conditioner. I was not among people, or rather I did not interact directly with anyone to speak of. No one I know witnessed this strange cosmetic episode.
It was enough to make me wish I had actually recorded myself on video, as I usually do. I had taken the camera out because I was not certain it was recording everything. Actually I was thinking it might be overwriting stuff already, including the first time I started recording again after putting it away during the girlfriend episode. I was revelling in the intrigue of creating a Secret Museum.
Yesterday I walked with a vengeance. I ended up on Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, near McCarren Park. Kind of a nothing stretch of road. 460 I think was the address. From there I walked all the way back to Astoria, considering hopping a B62 bus but blanching at the 20+ minute wait, during which time I could probably get where I was going in almost the same span of time. And the B62 only gets as far as Queens Plaza, where you are left off in a pedestrian-hostile area appeased only by the ability to walk underneath it all through the E/M subway. My approach to crossing that inhospitable blanket of road is via 21st Street, and even that feels hazardous.
My walk yesterday followed another morning of failure. I slept until 10:30, this after guaranteeing myself this would not happen again. With half the day wasted I guess it’s not too surprising I lacked the presence of mind to rinse my hair of its shampoo goo. Depite the lateness I convinced myself that I would follow through with a journey out to Rosedale, for reasons too vaporous to recount. But my subway jujitsu was way off. Every step of the way would have entailed a 15 minute wait for another train, and when the clock suddenly reached 1:30 and I was only as far as the Port Authority, and the next A train was at least 15 minutes away, I decided to turn back. It would be another hour before I got to Rosedale and that would leave little time to do anything, which was a planned waste of a day anyway. I am determined to waste this life.
I rode the 7 train just to be on a train. I do that some days. Just ride a train or bus to create the illusion that I have somewhere to go, someplace where I am needed. In the summer the bus is also prime for its air conditioning. That’s not so true on the subways, where the doors swing open every minute or 2. It’s been summer-time hot this late October. But I rode that 7 train to Woodside, discovering that the fucking escalator is out of service, explaining why the elevator is packed to the gills on virtually every ride up to the LIRR or 7 train platform.
I took the 7 back to Court Square, where the G got me to Nassau Street, a pseudo-destination I decided upon after randomly remembering that something of potential interest awaited me around that location on Manhattan Avenue. Greenpoint felt different from how I remembered it last time. Much more hipster and moneyed.
A useless Link5G tower has been erected on Queens Plaza North at 20-something street. 22nd Street, possibly, I did not note the precise location. If it is ever activated it will service a large vacant lot, a storage facility, and a bike path. These are locations starved for 5G. Seriously, any time I see one of those monster towers I grimace. They do not have 5G service and the likelihood that they ever will have 5G service is purely hypothetical.
Thinking about the weird obsession with working at McDonald’s in the 80s. I worked a summer at McDonald’s in 1986. I was the type of kid who would have saved some scrap of paper or a nametag or some piece of memorabilia. But I don’t believe any evidence of my time there exists. I’ve been told that any time you fill out a W2 form you are permanently on record somewhere, even if you only worked at a carwash for a couple of days. That’s something to explore if the mystery is worth pursuing.
