I saw her again on the train today, first time in probably three weeks. She recognized. She looked twice, then a third time as she exited the train at 57th Street and Seventh Avenue. She seems tough, and rugged, and today she clearly wore no wedding or engagement ring, or any ring at all. She’s becoming harder to recognize at first with the winter bundle-up. I don’t see her many days now because of the R train switcheroo. Taking that as I usually do sometimes would send me out to Brooklyn on the Q line. That would be bad. Bad for America. Bad for Nixon. Bad for the economy.
I walked 26000 steps yesterday. starting in Forest Hills and meandering listlessly toward Hillside. A lot of hilly streets with subtle twists and turns. Beverly Road for some reason sticks in my memory. I think there was an Ardsley Road as well. The day actually started right in front of the building where I began the hiring process for this job. It took two years from that introductory session before getting hired. Other people said theyw aited 3 years. Pandemic could not have helped but these wait times are typical for this organization. One person said she got a callback 8 years after applying for something within the company. By then she had lost interest.
I thought I was going to sit here and write a poem today but it’s getting away from me. It is the day after Thanksgiving, a day I barely even registered in my mind as being anything. I saw smiling people with bags of food going about the neighborhood, heading to friends or family destinations. Meant nothing to me. In the past there were neighborhood pot lucks at the local bars I used to go to but those places are nothing to me now.
I’m hearing a lot more coughing in this office. Could Covid rise again? I almost scheduled a booster shot for Monday and honestly do not know why I did not follow through.
I did some good deeds yesterday. Found a high school kid’s school ID card on the ground. The school was closed but I returned it there anyway, dropping it behind the closed gate at the front door. I hope she gets her ID back, and does not have to pay a $5 or $10 replacement fee. My next deed was to report a shattered pedestrian crosswalk signal. Looked like someone took a metal baseball bat to that thing. I reported it around 9am, it was fixed by 3pm, which really surprised/impressed me. My other deed was to report a dead rat on the sidewalk. That is supposed to take a couple of days and when I went back later the rat was still there, looking pretty fucking nasty in its state of decay. I’ve reported dead animals and when Sanitation arrived they found nothing. Some other beast of the street must have carried it off, or elsse a property owner took care of it.
THis feels like another wasted day has already commenced.