6/7/09 - New York is a Zoo (and she did stop)

On the subway to the zoo, the Asian man opposite us on the bench speaks quietly to the child clinging to his neck. As he tries to put her in her carriage, strapping her in and clipping the clips in the fashion they have now, she begins to cry and negate him in a language I don't know.

At first she's just whiny, a typical tantrum, and her parents rightly ignore it, but as the trip progresses, over the course of 45 minutes or so, she works herself up into a real fit, crying hysterically until she's completely out of control.

As we pull up to the stop for the zoo, and she and her family prepare to get off the train (as we are doing, as well) to go to the zoo on this most beautiful of days, Katie leans over to me and whispers, "Guarantee she stops crying as soon as we get off the train."

6/6/09 - Circle around the park

Rode about five and a half miles around Prospect Park in the middle of the afternoon. There wasn't anything particularly interesting about the day.

The previous evening, I was at a friend's cabaret performance, and she sang the song "Moonfall" which got me to thinking. The results of that thinking can be found here.

6/5/09 - Short attention

I saw two dwarfs today.

One was running for a train in a t-shirt and canvas sneakers, the other walking down the street in the rain, his small face (so similar to that of other little people I have seen, on TV and the like) watchful as he warily eyed the unsettled sky.

Sometimes when you hear an unusual word for the first time, you'll hear it again very soon afterwards, as though your ear were searching for it, and call it coincidence or selective attention or synchronicity (which is really just a coincidence freighted with an extra load of meaning).

Well this was nothing like that.

6/4/09 - Some Days

Some days, the subways are full of nothing but pretty girls. The world seems to shine with them, like a new penny face up on the ground, promising that today, glorious day, you walk in grace and can do no wrong. You feel blessed just to travel in their midst, and beautiful in their reflected glow.

And some days, not: the beauties aren’t there, and everyone seems hard-faced and closed, lost in thought, tired, no one shines; the penny is face-down in the muck at the bottom of the stairs, the Lincoln Memorial like bars, and you keep your head down, too, and just try to make it through the day.

6/3/09 - Dropped

The rain falls lightly, but stings my face as I pick up speed. The route I bike to Katie’s apartment is thick with riders, despite the wet, and every one of them seems determined to “drop” me (that is, to pass me, kicking up wet road muck as they go).

I balance with one foot touching the ground at a stoplight, and yet another rider pulls up beside me, grinning, and says, “Nice weather, huh?”

“Well,” I say, “it’ll do until the real good weather shows, right?” and the light turns green, and this guy, too, drops me.

6/2/09 - Seriously, it's freaking me out.

"Hey, Warren," I say to the short, round-faced, balding black man hanging out in front of my building. "Got a second?"

In my apartment, I show him the bulging boil of white paint hanging pendulously over my sink where the water from the apartment above has almost, but not quite, eaten through the ceiling of my bathroom.

"Yeah," he says, "those people upstairs moved about two weeks ago, but Mr. Zimmer won't even let me fix the hole in my ceiling that the leak made, and I'm the super!"

6/1/09 - this happens every once in a while

"Scott, please remind Dr. [redacted] that we need his outline for the training as soon as possible."

"Sure, I'll ask him about that right away."

I check my inbox, and due to a lazy streak I have been indulging the shit out of lately, I have not passed on the email that said Dr. sent me almost two weeks ago with exactly that information.

"Oh, man," I lie, "I thought sure he cc'd you on that!"