I intended and expected to sleep through it but fireworks or firecrackers or whatever the noise was made midnight a wake up call. It was fine. New Years is my favorite holiday. It’s possibly the only non-controversial event we can all agree on. No politics, religion, or controversy, just an arbitrary day to make everyone happy. I remember watching Y2K, as the world would allegedly grind to a computer bug-infested halt, instead we saw every country on earth, or close to it, one by perfect one, step up to the spotlight for its moment of the year 2000. It was a shining moment, golden in my memory.It felt a bit like the Olympics, but without the controversies or problems.
I got to work so early today and I do not know why. On weekdays the MTA app is actually pretty accurate, unlike weekends, when it’s just a token presence. The 6:02 actually comes at 5:55, and the 6:10, which is not even on the app ever at all, comes at 6:14. THese minutes matter. I’d been trying to connect the N to the R because a sweet-seeming and hopelessly beautiful woman on that train and I seemed to have caught each other’s attention. She saw me looking her over months ago when she wore cut-up jeans and a loose shirt that exposed just enough. She returned the looks, but later I saw she wore a ring. ANother day she did not wear the ring. Maybe the ring did not mean what it traditionally means?
Who cares… Yesterday I hopped a bus to East Rutherford. For no definitive reason Idecided I had to see the American Dream Mall, which is as vast and expansive a mall as I’ve ever encountered. Much of it was tacky, garish, and forgettable. Some of the art was OK but nothing raised my senses or challenged my sensibilities. I felt miserbale much of the day, on poor NYE sleep and very little food inside me. Getting to AMD from Port Authority was quicker than getting to the Port Authority. About 15 minutes and you’re there. I contemplated the indoor roller coaster but said no, the security goons will think I’m a pedophile, as seemed to be the case when I wandered about the video game room. I was not intending to play any games, just checking out every corner of this palatial landscape. But the security dude there clearly thought I was worth tailing. “BEWARE THE SINGLE MAN” is athe name of a short essay my m other sent me in our early days of email. It did not suggest sexual intransiance but it suggested that a man without a woman, a man without a purpose, was destined for trouble. In later years I learned that a single man is considered a predator if he is alone at a playground or any place where children are present. I’ve heardcredible accounts from men who had no idea they were doing anything suspicious when cops appeared and escorted them off the grounds of a public playground or schoolyard. That is how it felt, just momentarily, for me yesterday at the AMD game room. I felt it in my interest to just leave the place. AMD is, of course, largely targeted at kids. I guess I knew that, peripherally, but it meant nothing to me except that I expected screaming kids.
I attempted to install a new GPU on my aging/aged HP Z420. In an earlier episode I tried to upgrade to a 12GB GPU, but the power supply was lacking. I should have expected this but I did in fact believe the PSU was 750, not 600. I attempted to upgrade the PSU but it was all a big fail. 600W PSU does not suppoert 12GB GPU but it will be ok with an 8GB. But wait, I have to get a 6-pin to 8-pin adapter and possibly update the BIOS. Do I even know what that means? I plugged in the new GPU and, when powering up, no up was powered. Nothing happened at all. Replacing the old GPU returned things to normal.
I’ve been told that walking to work in the dark, and going home from work in the dark, is a depressive routine that will weight upon my conscience. It’s not having that effect at all, I guess because I get plenty of daylight by leaving the office several times a day. I walk from here to Brookfield Place, or from here to the Staten Island Ferry terminal. It’s a brisk, time-tight plan. I also make it over to the Elevated Acre at 55 Water Street, where a friend of mine has an office. I go there to watch the helicopters take off and land. It’s like watching a kind of dance, or a choreography. Last year I turned down a job that would have had me working 3am to 11am. I thought it presented health risks, and it probably does, but now I’m thinking I should have taken that job after all. I would have been dispatching taxis and car services from a bunker near the cemetery. What kind of movie-setup is that? I might look into it again, to see if they job which is probably pretty high turnover ever becomes available again.
I applied for something at the MTA. I consider myself a worthy candidate but hiring has become such a crapshoot that being qualified is kind of a negative. Nobody is ever perfectly qualified for anything. The job I’m in now requires skills and abilities that were nowhere in the original job descriptions. That’s fine. Things evolve.
It is still dark outside. I saw something interesting today. Myself. As a train rolled into the station I spotted my seemingly stationary reflection in the rapidly passing windows of the train. The cars were moving but my likeness stood still. It’s not a new phenomenon by any estimate but I thought it was interesting. A moment of statis in the genre of transience.