Category: Text

There is one guy here who is my favorite. I don’t think we’ve exchanged one word of conversation. When we pass in the halls he decisively and demonstrably turns away. He looks down, to the side, anywhere but in my...

An art magazine (online only) lightly rewrote and published the New York Times article from last month about the alleged “last payphone” of New York. I was quoted in the piece, but not really. My comments were...

I took 60mg of Nifidipene (sp?) and 1.5mg of lorazapam. Nifi is for BP, Loraz is for anxiety. Together these two pills bring me down to earth, albeit with a feeling that I’d been on fire before. Burnmarks from the flames...

I did not realize until I was on the train how much of a fucking slob I look like today. I don’t need to look beautiful for anyone but man, I got the wrong shirt and pants this time. I clean up well when I have to, and for...

I remembersitting at a bar once, typing away with abandon. The bartender came over and asked “Are you writing a novel?” I laughed, somewhat uncomfortably and I’m not sure why of that. I said “I’m...

About this morning? Clips of time. Clippings. Yesterday’s meet with a PCP/Psychoanalyst caught me all the way off guard. I left feeling mentally orgasmed. I went in feeling guilty, like a junkie asking for a buzzfix. That...

I’ve had some concerns about Saturday’s checking out of work early. I was told “documentation” was required. I  might be able to get my old PCP to back me up, but he’s not my PCP anymore. So far,...

A tour guide directed us to the highlights. The  earth’s core comprises billions of unconceived fetuses, the arc of their unwanted lives accruing in the minds of spontaneous, unprepared lovers. Their anxieties and...

Thinking about what difference, if any, having a full-time job for the first time in 20 years has made in my life, in my days. I knew it would be an adjustment, and it was. But almost all those adjustments felt good. I like...

Now I get fresh interference. Yesterday does not resemble the upcoming minute, which itself will not remember a cactus burning to death. Limbering up his bamboo sticks of lies his voice becomes sharp, and rigid. A hungry,...

Payphone Radio got a little weird last week. Some folks found it again, just a few, not the mob scene that tried to call into it back in January.Someone was talking like an Apologista, someone who knew the old Apology Line or at...

I encountered another waterfall last night. Avalanche. Ocean under which I drown. I may never know how many of those I have. Moving everything from google docs to ms365 seemed like it could be simple. Maybe it will be, but my...

Hah. Got the corner suite today.  I don’t usually type into my personal void from the work spot but no one is here and no one cares what I do off the clock. I took a panic pill just now, and a BP one as well. I don’t...

Yesterday was spent, unexpectedly, in pursuit of remnants, or archaelogical evidence, of the payphones of yore. Some have been gone for 2 decades. Others disappeared more recently. They are everywhere, though, so long as you...

Someone on the street walks up to you. Or maybe you walk up to them. you don’t know what is in their head, what room they just stepped out of, or what space they are preparing to enter. They might want to enter your space,...

The place I usually get a cheese omelette and a banana every morning decided to stop giving out plastic fork and knife packages that include salt and pepper. I must now request salt and pepper packets. The plastic utensil (now...

There is a woman I see on the subway at least once a week. For a while we would cross paths every single day, it seemed. We enter and exit the train at the same stations, exiting at Fulton Street. At least that’s how it...

pointy words garbageboard buns buggy peanuts stun ape (eap!) 10 hours in the short life of a hemmeroid beestormers too ticklish on the taco truck instant stratification seedful salads she walks with a batter waddle sticks in...

Seems I got a rare gift. 2 days paid leave. Not consecutive days but they end up being that since they precede my usual Wednesday day off.  That’s good information, right? Feeling waves of pitifulness today. Pricklings of...

Yesterday was fun. Impromptu. If I really wanted to watch low-flying planes I would have gone to Flushing. In the Main Street and surrounding areas it’s like you can see the whites in the eyes of the passengers, the planes...

I made it out to the Calvary Cemeteries today. All 4 of them. It was not planned, and the decision to dip into New Calvary was guided by the presence of low-flying planes approaching LaGuardia. They made for interesting video,...

all that shit I just deleted. Nobody reads this shit anymore so my secrets are safe here, hiding in plain sight.  At a coffee shop, after a day spent bolting up to Mott Haven for what turned out to be no good reason. I rarely...

Being at a regular job (whatever that means anymore) has changed my attitudes about time. My experience of time, rather. It no longer feels like a slippery, elastic, uncontrollable material.  And what of the seconds? They will...

…apocalypse of time The nonsense of time The abysm of time The halitosis of time The rhubarb of time

I am always on time. Never late. Usually early. THis is said to be a good character trait. A signal of integrity and reliability. Being thrust into a time-controlled environment for the first time in 20 years has changed my...

There are other reasons to take the panic pill and the bp med. if it stops me drinking i save money. well duh, right? i’m not making enough money at this job. in fact i’m losing money. i expected that but it still...

My goal had been to make this a 6-month gig. Working from the belly of the beast, Lower Manhattan, I hear the voices scurry through. Voices of the concerned, the melancholy, the stranded. A city filled with agonies of all sizes....

…

I’ve been here about 3 months now, in the belly of the beast. Lower Manhattan. I spend my days talking to New York. I did not expect to fall in love with this job but that seems to be what has happened. My plan had been to...

One day to the next it’s something different. Shakes, anxiety, even panic one day. Serenity, peace, even happiness the next. I’m on the latter lurch at the moment. Payphone patrol turned up mild intrigue. Someone...

It has not been the only continuous thing in my life in New York. In fact it is not even the oldest thing. But the 181 has been my permanent and public address since `~1991. Back then I think it cost $24 a year. The price has...

No change, I can change I can change, I can change But I’m here in my mold I am here in my mold And I’m a million different people

I never think there will be enough time. 10 minutes is not enough. But then 10 minutes feels like too much. Time is frustratingly elastic like that. At my job I’ve reached a point of virtual rapture. I love the sounds....

Today I went all in, every pill in my arsenal, to avoid a repeat of yesterday’s snot frenzy. Some kind of mud-dust was rolling in through an air conditioner vent. I sit at this desk frequently but never experienced this...

Starting to love this job, then hating myself for fucking it up at times. Was doing well today until a sinus event and a cough intruded on my performance. Took a break to blow out gallons of snot. I’ve been sleeping with...

What have I learned about my fascinating self after 2.5 months at my first full-time job in 20 years? I don’t know. Is it even worth asking? I knew I’d be good at this job, and I am. I remember one lifer, when asked,...

I’m willing to bet that most people I work with here do not spend any portion of their break time carousing lower Manhattan for payphones and LinkNYC machines. Is “carousing” even a word? Today was a rare...

Bathrooms were separated by ethnicity. It you were “ethnic” you used one bathroom. If you were “non-ethnic” you used another. I did now know what this meant. A black woman directed me to the non-ethnic...

Zany dream last night. An ex from many years ago, who has not entered my mind in I don’t even know how long, made an appearance.  A bunch of people had gathered by a swimming pool. Context is everything but to make a long...

Today should be the first time since working here that I do not make the lunchtime sprint to check on the payphones and the LinkNYC machines around here. It’s been fun but for once I think I’ll take a normal one-hour...

At a coffee shop watching the unexpected-to-me snow blast pouring down. My doubts about the job hve become a little more intense. Most people there would sway it is a job you do not take home with you. Unfortunately for me, that...

Seem to have started exactly what I did not want to occur here at the workplace. Drama. I was not going to say anything, but I felt it appropriate to say that I had an allergic reaction to something. It impacted my ability to do...

Up at 5am today. Sunday. Watching a woman on a live cam. She says it’s her first time doing this. That could be, but most of these camgirls know what they are doing. In a simpler time one might actually make lasting...

Nothing to say but when has that stopped me from saying it… I don’t know. Tomorrow is a day off for me. Still unwilling to consecrate this place with the glory of my fecality, even though I probably should, for...

I think this job, with its regular schedule and such, has changed my relationship with time. After 20 years of rarely needing to watch the clock or think about it I presently find time to feel apocalyptic, or something like an...

Someone messaged me at my radio FB page. I don’t know what they said. Not yet. Listening to humming and whirring of the vending machines in what they call the “vendeteria,” so-called because there is no café,...

I take my breaks by the payphone. That is what I do. Makes me feel right at home. If anyone asks why I choose this break room when the other is closer I will offer no explanation. My payphone past has no place in this...

At work early. Daily debate with myself, made more urgent on paydays: Why am I doing this? I want no career. The stifling, monotonous schedule would make the most growed-ass man cry from boredom. There is a certain joy, I guess,...

For as long as I last at this current job I get Wednesdays and Sundays off. My doubts about continuing at this position mostly involve money. I am losing money spending 60 hours of my week performing this job, getting there and...

At the ghetto coffee shop. Have not been here, to sit down at least, since pre-pandemic. It is Feb 23 2022. I stayed away from here on account of nobody ever wearing masks, and considered staying away for good just to make a...

7:57am 2/19/2022 Sitting at Hestia, Maiden Lane… or is it Liberty Street? 7:57am, February 19, 2022… Yesterday was a first time I’d posted like this, from the small keyboard into the small screen of the aging...

I have not done this in many months, I don’t think. It’s been long enough since I did this that I might find that this email-to-website thing does not even work anymore. Sitting in a coffee shop, pecking into a...

Sometimes I hear signals. See them, at least. I hear nothing now but whirring from the freezer behind me. I grew up in a freezer. It was on the top rack, with ice cube trays and three other children, where I learned to...

typing this at the piano, with no spell check, because i am such a manly man in that respect. 10:39pm as i start. an ongoing epic correspondence with the author of a sheet music reading program has me ready to throw in the...

Saturday, all at once, I downed 60mg of Nifedipine and 2½mg of Lorazepam. This was my first intake of either drug in probably three months. I had felt strung out, excitable, directionless. I felt like walking the day away, as I...

Thought I might have something to say this day, this gift of a day, after waking at 5am. But no. Instead I got to deal with the monotonous, tiresome chore of cleaning up log files and freeing space on this web server. I should...

It’s amazing what a difference even a smattering of contact with a new-to-me human being has on my disposition. A couple of YT comments had me bounding from this place, facing the world like a conqueror. Just as abruptly...

So many things go missing. Memory is a bastard peris (that was supposed to be ‘period’) a bastard. Rummaging through hundreds even thousands of old photos photos last night I turned up a squall of images I completely...

I do not remember them. So many of my minutes blacked out. I don’t even want to save them and I am one who wants to save everything.

Woke up and wrote over 1800 words for a story inspired by a dream I had but also based on real-life experiences. A woman I used to know was in love with intelligence. She claimed the most physically repulsive person alive could...

I think it was my 12-letter words and big ambitions. She’s a simple sort, poor (like me), with no desires to do anything but sit at her desk 11-12 hours a day. Her voice is oddly shrill for such a timid creature. We did...

Session Start: Wed Sep 03 12:06:01 2008 Session Ident: #philosophy 15[12:06] * Now talking in #philosophy 04[12:06] * Topic is ‘Neff Log Cabin Republican: Neff no, you are. [21:01] maybe there’s alcohol involved in...

What can you do with a rhombus? Well for starters you can turn it into a square. You can make it rectangle. You can turn to into a circle, a star, a fraction, a quadratic equation. You can do anything with a rhombus.

I let sorabji.mobi, one of my favorite domains, expire a few months ago. .mobi is a failed top level domain originally intended for use by websites that were designed for mobile devices. That was before seemingly everything was...

She mentioned it twice, both times driving the car whilst circambcombanducantortadillaybewildered, saying it was always/only a woman’s right, not any man’s, a sentiment with which I never disagreed, on instinct,...

Awaking to the usual expectation of expectoration, that I must produce, must create, must continue to fill oceans with mountains, mountains of text, intellectual cardboard, impossibly forgotten photographs, mental effluvia of...

Dear Bob, Hello. How are you doing? I was thinking of you last night when I ordered a Cape Codder at Kennedy’s Restaurant & Bar on West 57th Street. They made it exceptionally strong, I think, which may have...

I knew her through the Minitel, available in New York as “Aline”.

Another Gothamist story appears to be brewing. A journalist there tweeted to someone who posted a video over the weekend, to get a quote from him about the kiosks. He seems to be a skeptic of the kiosks, from what little else he has posted, questioning the pat response that it is an “old-fashioned phone […]

Might have just taken too huge of a chance on things, but I did it intentionally. A well-dressed dude with a professional-grade video camera and tripod was shooting video on Third Avenue, I think at 52nd Street. There was a kiosk right in front of him. I stepped into the frame and dialed the number, […]

I have had this thought before, but never chronicled it. I have to ask if it is possible that people get paid to go around neighborhoods asking for directions to certain places. I was just approached by a woman walking the other direction with what I assume were her two kids, a young daughter and […]

I just gave someone pinpoint and accurate directions to 33rd Avenue in Astoria, the little sidestreet even native Astorians do not think exists. I have, in the past, given inaccurate directions to that street, even though I pass it very frequently. But it is, even on repeated exposure, not a street to take note of. […]

More day. Up early. Getting up early just gives me more time to waste. I think, no I know, that this sentiment turned a certain correspondent against me. I guess I can’t blame her, though the conversation was getting rather long in the tooth anyway. I have not missed it. Interesting crowd last night. One […]

Who has time for anything? How does anyone have time to do anything? Certain words and concepts give me more and more trouble as I keep them in consideration. So much of our civilization relies on phenomena and behaviors that cannot be proven to have occurred. You say you see something. Prove it. Disprove it. […]

At Rockefeller Center in what might be the most perfect spot in terms of air conditioning. I am directly under one of the vents, and Rockefeller Center has air conditioning that is, if anything, a little over the top even on very hot days. I had a conversation about that with one of the post […]

At the coffee shop, a ponderous and hot afternoon spent wandering the kiosks for what feels like something of an end run. I’ll keep doing it but not as determinedly, and more in keeping with how I used to do it, which was on my way to whatever else I am doing. I think I’m […]

The ripple effects are subtle, yet morbid once you key into them. At 40th Avenue and 29th Street I saw and waved hello to someone who lives in my building as he was walking the other direction. I smiled some, thinking that the relative unlikelihood of seeing this person so far from the building (6 […]

Don’t know what to know, what not to know, what there is to know. I know nothing, I know everything, but all else I know is that something exists in between nothing and everything. At the library for the first time in a long while, save for just idly passing through. I don’t see any […]

At the coffee shop, using a new bluetooth keyboard for the first time since getting it a couple of weeks ago. This Logitech K380 replaces a previous K380, which developed an annoying habit of switching some keys around. So if I want to put something within quotation marks it would come up as being with […]

OK, since I don’t think that last payphone call worked and because I’d rather be anywhere but at home, I am at the coffee shop, reprising what I attempted to report earlier. I seem to have finally achieved the success I thought I had reached a few days ago, with regard to getting a radio […]

Alright, then, back on the ferris wheel of life, or rather the trampoline, the Weeble that can’t not wobble. Feeling fine now but guilty, and undeserving of anything. Wrote some stuff from home, now writing again at the ghetto coffee shop, which isn’t really all that ghetto except once in a while when someone walks […]

Today felt accomplishful. I listened back to some recordings I forgot all about. It’s from February 20, the day I walked to the Unisphere and back, a trek which must rank among my most epic. At a certain point it felt like I was abusing myself, as I now recall from listening to the tracks. […]