4-10-08 Hanging Bike

I screwed a hook into my ceiling, and from said hook I hang my bike. My apartment now looks like a "...real New York apartment", says Katie, "like, 'yeah, my bike's hanging over my guitars and the vacuum cleaner next to the fridge, so what?'"

Last night, late, riding my bike home down Dean Street (where sketchy lives and the factories just don't stop!) was like riding through a cloud that lost its ambition and ended up wetly moping along the ground. The bike and I were covered in a fine mist that, when I hung my bike up, left wet, streaky black marks on the wall and ceiling.

4-9-08 Shoes

Spring's here, and you can tell because girls are starting to wear their cute shoes again. Red and pink painted toes peek out from open-toed heels like tulip buds pushing out of the ground, flats and ballet style shoes in metallics flash across sidewalks and up stairs; thick, clunky boots retreat to the back of the closet and the sandals begin their warm-up stretches after the long winter.

Speaking of shoes, I tend to be pretty hard on mine, and, after only a month or so of wear, the shoelaces on my new work shoes needed replacing. Nothing makes me feel so much like an adult and a little kid at the same time as buying new shoelaces: the tidy loops tightly wound in their paper wrapping, threading the new shoelace (never exactly the same color black as the previous shoelace) through the eyes on the blind, gaping shoe, tying the shoe extra tight again without fear of breaking the old, worn shoelace.

4-7-08 Flowing with the Tide

Between Sixth Avenue, where the B train arrives on 42nd Street, and Fifth Avenue, a tunnel stretches to funnel commuters beneath the street. For some reason, today all of the trains in both directions arrived at the station at once, and the tunnel was full of people, hundreds of people bobbing along in the stream of bodies, all flowing down the conduit.

I was worried that, if I surrendered to the flow, relaxed and let the tide carry me, that I would lose my individuality, but I realized that if I relaxed my body, flowed with the mass, while keeping my eyes open and paying attention, that I actually was freed to be even more myself. I didn't have to push or impose my will, skirting between slower walkers and constantly searching for an opening - I could be both myself and a part of the crowd, anonymous, unremarked, necessary.

4-5-08 The Class War Continues

Walking last night home from a thing, recounting a conversation from the evening before to Katie.

"...and I told her that the reason I hadn't been mugged was because I look kinda mean when I'm just walking around, and she told me to show me my mean look. She looks at me and she says, 'You don't look that mean.'"

Katie says, "Honey, you don't look mean, you look poor!"

4-3-08 Knight of Pentacles

The workload has been very light for the past few days, and though normally I'd be pleased with this, the boredom of it is actually starting to wear on me. I stare at a computer screen for hour upon hour and feel my eyeballs begin to crystallize and turn opaque under the constant bombardment of needles of gamma wave radiation from the monitors.

I meditate in the mornings, chanting my mantra, doing push ups, watching my body change, waiting for some kind of overwhelming epiphany to break upon me like lightning, but fairly sure that what I'm really looking for is coming gradually. Maybe I'm looking for an enlightenment more subtle - less like flipping a switch than watching the sun come inexorably up after a long, long night.

4-2-08 Gross Out Post Warning - Sinuses

After enduring an inexplicable stuffed up nose for the past 2 weeks, today during breakfast, for some equally inexplicable reason, my entire sinus cavity abruptly liquified and drained. I imagine the flooding of the Nile River Valley might have felt like this, if the Nile River Valley were a nose that suddenly began to gush a thick, clear mucus over its morning eggs and toast.

The upshot of this rather disturbing event was my sudden increased capacity to smell the newly arriving spring. The heady, floral perfume of the woman walking by on the subway, the acrid smog from the bus idling in the intersection, the loitering smoke of the cigarettes burning in the vestibules of the buildings I pass, that man's coffee he frantically sips as he hurries along to work, everything opened up and my world went from black and white to technicolor, 360-degree, smell-o-vision.

4-1-08 Not an April Fool's Joke

Across the street from my work, clearly visible from a window in the board room, is a tree, just beginning to bloom. The delicate green buds, glowing in the grey of a cloudy day, must have been growing for the past week, and yet, all of a sudden, there they are, just like magic. It's supposed to be 65 degrees or something ridiculous today, and there is no stopping the world from turning.

Spring comes, winter ends, and darkness, without our really noticing, as busy as we are, suddenly gives way to light, and everything changes.