This afternoon I am leaving my island for a work party upstate. I don't like to leave the island, even to Brooklyn. Last weekend we went to Governors Island, which is still a part of New York City and only a 5-10 minute ferry ride back to the southern tip of Manhattan, and still I had nerves I had to push down about missing the last ferry back and being stuck off my island for a whole night. It's silly. This is how you become a crazy person. Next thing you know, you don't leave your apartment for decades and your eyes seal closed because you're not used to sunlight.
Category: new york city
-
- Stay late at work—even though the whole company closes at 12:30—trying to get to that one last thing on the enormous pile that awaits you Monday.
- Take the elevator down once and then back up again because you forgot something.
- Observe how sidewalks are made as two workers crawl on their knees knocking out white plastic dividers between the hardened squares using small hammers.
- Walk home the long way. In fact, walk southwest until you're traipsing through SoHo and your feet hurt and you've been bumped once too many times on Broadway.
- Go clothes shopping even though you have no extra money and so don't actually buy anything.
- Except for a pie, for your other half, who is working on a reality TV set today and will probably come home sticky and tired and craving pie.
- In the gourmet store that sells the pie observe the pastries with a measured sense of distrust. Pink glaze will not save you. In reality, it will hurt. Walk away.
- Stand on line for as long as is physically possible in order to have a Strawberry Whirl (TM) smoothie. Meditate on the swirling blenders while you wait.
- Tell perfect strangers where to find the cleanest public restroom in the Village. (It's a secret, but I'll tell if you ask.)
- Pick up random items from the drugstore since you walked past it and figured you may as well go in.
- Give the guy on the crate a quarter.
- Call E on set and ask when he's coming home.
- Attempt to clean the apartment.
- Call E on set again just to say hi.
- Stop cleaning the apartment in order to write this post.
-
Thunder directly above our building, cracks and flashes in the airshaft. Then the patter of water hitting the air-conditioning unit; when it gets heavy, I wonder if it will fall. I love the rain. In the daytime I can't tell when it's even raining because my desk is so far from a window. At night, I can hear it but not see it, unless I go in the bedroom and peek over the air-conditioner (quite grimy), or through the bars. When I was young and it rained I'd run outside with no coat or shoes and get soaked in it. Once, there was my mother and my brother and my sister and me, out on our front lawn in broad daylight getting soaked for all the cars passing to see. My stepfather wasn't home so we could do such things. It was a good memory, made better because that was the summer I knew I was leaving. And knew, too, that I'd end up here, in this city where when it rains you can't see it and there's no grass nearby to mash my feet in. I didn't realize what I'd miss.
-
Out walking Sunday morning before most people are up. Few cars in the streets. The firemen spray the sidewalk in front of their firehouse with a hose. A broken bottle on the corner maybe from a drunken fight last night. The park is being cleaned by women in matching blue T-shirts and garbage bins on wheels (some kind of community service?). They discuss men as they wheel the bins around, commiserate with each other. The fountain is on and a few silent people sit watching. On the bench beneath the knotted tree a man and woman sleep, a giant suitcase by their side. The man sleeps sitting up, slumped forward over his knees. The woman sleeps sideways on the bench, her head as close to him as she can get it without actually touching him. I saw them yesterday morning, too, same bench, same grubby suitcase. The man was yelling at the woman yesterday, telling her to listen, did she hear what he said? Now, this morning as I pass they both snore. Wonder if they live there on that bench, have nowhere else to go. This is the same tree under which some mornings people meet and shake hands a lot. Don’t look too closely, don’t want to know what they’re handing off. Past the park, every restaurant is closed. Chairs up on tables, gated windows. Two boys swaying drunkenly as they walk down the block, passing me loudly, their night not yet over. The newsstand is boarded up. The light is green when I reach Broadway, but there are no cars so I cross through the Don’t Walk sign. There is no line at the coffee shop. In the display windows of the clothing store all the models have had their clothes removed. They stand there, posed plastic, naked. One window contains only naked torsos, perfectly smooth, blank heads. The others show the naked bodies reaching out toward each other, saying nothing. An old man walking a dog stops and looks. In the far window, a store employee slowly dresses the models. She has three more wide windows to go. I reach my building, sign in at the guard’s desk. Each morning he watches a movie on a tiny portable screen, doesn’t even look up. This morning he has let a strange woman use his telephone. She cries. He looks at me helplessly, as she is holding his pen. I sign in with my own pen, up the elevator, and here I am.
distraction no.99 