6-22-08 Seriously, is it just me?

I'm walking out of the bodega with my laundry over my shoulder as someone is trying to come in. I don't want to accidentally bump into him, and so I say, preemptively, "Pardon me."

Dude turns around and follows me out the store and a few feet down the street before stopping and watching me walk away. I make it about half-way down the block before turning around, and he is on the phone, occasionally looking my way as I continue to my apartment building.

6-21-08 That's Mer-MAN!

Went to the mermaid day parade - my first ever, and maybe the last ever, too. Watched the cars and various freaks walking by in their self-involved finery, until about three-quarters of the way through, we got bored and decided to go on rides.

The Cyclone Rollercoaster is (still) a rattling, rust-bucket death-trap, but the Wonder Wheel may be one of my favorite rides ever. The height, the perspective, the swinging cars that give small, occasional thrills instead of the overstimulation of the Neck-Breaker or whatever the hell that ride was I went on that almost made me throw up (it was the Breakdancer).

6-15-08 Well, thank god I got THAT over with

I could see them coming over a block away - three guys, one crosses the street, the other two come on. "Here we go," I think to myself.

Hoods up, they're within striking distance, I try to go around, the one blocks my way, the other saying, "Gimmie your money."

They leave with 20 bucks and a couple of bruises, while I leave exhilerated and furious, but otherwise unharmed (details will be found here when I get around to writing, but suffice to say, I'm fine, and feel that I acquitted myself rather well).

6-14-08 Cyberdyne and Swedish Decor

Katie and I ride our bikes out to Red Hook, looking for a farmer's market we've read about. After a brief incident with another popped tire, we find the farm, but no market.

Across the street from the farm (Red Hook seems like the edge of the world, no tall buildings, just waterfront, then water, and then what feels like next stop Europe) is the new Ikea, its hulking and monstrous bulk disguised in primary blue and yellow paint in much the same way that one would attempt to disguise a rhino by dressing it in a party hat.

Katie stares up at its sprawl and vast, lunatic cheerfulness for a few seconds before saying, in a terrified voice, "on August 4, it becomes self-aware!"

6-11-08 It couldn't be more perfect

Riding my bicycle to see Katie, it feels like a burden I've been carrying is lifting from my shoulders. The air is cool, the sun setting as the sky fades to pink, it's my favorite time of day, and riding is one of my favorite things to do - I'm completely happy in an uncomplicated way.

Suddenly there's a sound like a snake has climbed onto my bike, and the front tire goes rapidly flat. A shard of glass, almost 3/8's of an inch long has punctured my front tire in a way that I couldn't have planned if I'd wanted it.

6-1-08 There, but for the grace of God...

Walking home from the subway after my show opened, a long walk straight down Classon Street from the G Train through Fort Greene, and it’s mostly a pretty nice neighborhood, but I have trouble letting go of my fear (is this group of people walking toward me going to hurt me? will that guy try to mug me? will I have to fight? will I have to run?). A beautiful tortoise-shell cat with a white face and green eyes walks around a tree in my path, and I make my usual “tsk-tsk-tsk” noise to get its attention, expecting it to run off, as strays usually do.

Instead it begins following me, meowing, almost running to keep up, plaintively looking up into my face to beg (something, what?) of me, and I begin to be a little worried about this very friendly cat – I mean, I can’t take it home with me because of my cat, what do I do? – until it stops in front of a door on the street and begins rubbing on the wall beside it, obviously comfortable and at home.

My heart breaks for a little cat that doesn’t know how to open a door when it wants to go inside, but I see the homeless guy on the street and I think, “ah, he probably did something to fuck up his life,” and there’s not really a difference – both are confused, lacking certain skills to be able to help themselves, maybe made a bad decision, went outside once too often and forgot how to get back in.

5-31-08 Camels of the Heights of Guam

Katie and I stopped by a historic site in Park Slope called the Old Stone House. The informational placard on the outside relates that the house was built in the 1600's on the hills of what is now Park Slope which at the time was called "The Heights of Guam" back when Brooklyn was run by the Dutch and spelled Breuklen.

The humid day wrapped around us with slightly cold clammy hands, and we walked around Park Slope saying "Breuklen" over and over, in faux-Dutch accents.

Katie then stopped into a store a bought a shirt with camels on it, and by the time we got out, a breeze had blown the humidity away.

5-30-08 Jesus Loves Me (but you may still be crazy)

As I'm walking to work through my neighborhood, a black man on a bike with a leopard print cane stops me. "'Scuse me, but why would you want to live here?" He asks.

We talk about some things, my money situation, my girlfriend, where I used to live, and he offers me advice on not getting mugged ("Don't let anybody take advantage of you," he says, and it takes me a minute to recognize what he's talking about), before telling me about how he and his wife go around talking to people about God.

Just then, a white woman with sad, pious, watery eyes rides up on another bike, and she proceeds to rattle off a string of almost unintelligible blessings: "Maythelordorallcreationbleesyouandwatchoveryouandgrantyouallspiritualandmaterialblessingsandmayyoubewashedinthebloodofthelamb. Do you love Jesus?"

"Of course!" I say, and shake both their hands before walking away into a sunny morning full of light.

5-28-08 And they Struck the Motherlode

Rehearsed at a loft in Williamsburg, and it was full of funky, interesting people doing their various artistic things. Knick-knacks and bricolage art all over the walls, multi-colored paintings of bulls and people, black and white photographs of cats and slightly out-of-focus women looking longingly into the distance, a chess set with shot glasses for pieces, crates and crates and crates full of old records, men and women walking the corridors in various states of dishevelment, old, enormous rusted tools laid out attractively on ramshackle wooden shelves, unmatched but beautiful old furniture placed all over: all indicators of the certain type of young, artistic, person who would naturally gravitate to Williamsburg in the early years of the 21st century.

We were given the tour of the (surprisingly large) space that had been subdivided into individual rooms, and came upon the (again, surprisingly large) kitchen area, the cavernous nature and wooden floors of which caused one of our number to remark, "It reminds me of a mining colony."

"Yeah," I replied, "a colony where they mine for cool."

5-27-08 Storm's coming

The sky glowers with heavy dark gray clouds, thick with rain and bruised-looking. The wind sifts through the leaves and bends the trees with heavy, fat fingers, and pushes bags full of garbage rolling along the street. I lean into the wind as I walk home from the subway, all thoughts of crime and the depression of my neighborhood blown away in the weather, happy with the feeling of being very small on a very big planet. Big weather reminds me that everything placed here by human hands, all this city and industry that we are so proud of, can be shaken off and reduced to rubble by the earth so much as twitching it's skin.

5-26-08

This entire weekend, I've ridden my bicycle to rehearsal in Williamsburg. It's a fun little trip, almost 4 miles each way, mostly bike paths on the way, but requiring a little more skill and alertness on the way back, since the roads are all one way, and narrower on the way from Williamsburg to Crown Heights.

Today, I didn't take my bike, but instead rode the subway, since I knew I'd be coming home late, and was worried about the lateness of the hour, and the condition of the drivers on the road, this being Memorial Day and all.

Walking home from the subway, the parties spilled out onto the sidewalks and into the streets, and I wished I taken my bike instead; at least that way I could have ridden down the center of the road and avoided all the drunk people on the way home.

5-25-08 Your Guide to Firefighting

Walking home from dinner (where we ate all breakfast foods) in Park Slope, Katie and I watch a firetruck roll up to a building. A handful of firemen, all suited up with the tanks on their backs and the jackets and the helmets and everything, jump off the truck and begin to make their way over to the door in a desultory fashion, looking up at the building as they go, as if looking for something.

After watching them mill about listlessly for a few minutes, I say, "Your guide to fire fighting, number 1: when you arrive at the site of the fire, check and see if there are flames coming out of the building anywhere, say, through the windows and doors."

Katie chimes in, "Number two: double-check the address, just to make sure you're at the right place."

5-24-08 Saturday Morning Brooklyn

Nothing says peaceful like a wealthy Orthodox Jewish neighborhood on a Saturday morning. I ride my bike past thoughtful looking, bearded men in furry hats that sit on top of their heads like enormous UFO's, their prayer shawls thrown over their shoulders, and I wonder at their lives.

No cars on the roads, the stoplights signalling the comings and goings of non-existent traffic, but I'm there, and I barely pay attention to the stoplights when there's a reason to, when I'm surrounded by vehicles whose only seeming wish (never mind the desires of their drivers) is to splatter me across the highway.

But at one stoplight, I pause, dismount, resting my feet on the pavement, thinking that if God and all the Jews in Williamsburg can stop for a whole day, I can do the same for thirty seconds.

5-22-08 What's Really the Matter

I've been distracted and a little depressed for the past few days.

I wake up most mornings recently at my place with a new, red, angry looking bug-bite on some part of my body, and sometimes many on many different parts of my body, which naturally led me to the hypothosis that I might have bed-bugs.

I washed all of my clothes and sheets and my futon cover in super-hot water, and then dried everything, and in the process I found one little fucking bed-bug (but we know that there's more than just one, right?), which I stabbed to death with a scissors before washing it down the bathroom sink.

He was dark brown and flat and roundish-shaped, with squirmy little legs, and even though I try to feel compassion for living things, bugs just tap right into that animal part of my brain that wants to kill, and I feel depressed because I know the kind of hassles that are going to go into fixing this, and the bites itch, which just bums me out even more

5-21-08 Picky, picky

Mary sits in front of our building in her usual spot, green jacket and brown hat. She greets me warmly as I come home from work.

"They finally kicked those nasty people out of the building," she says, "so if they rent them out on the second floor," (she means the apartments that have been newly vacated), "and fix this place up, it might get nicer, here."

When I begin to list some thoughts I have on things that might need fixing (a front door that locks, for example), she laughs and says, "oh, I don't think I want to be seen talking to you, you troublemaker, cuz they might evict me next!"

5-20-08 Super-size enthusiasm

The entire corner by my subway stop is cordoned off with "CAUTION" tape, and a hardhatted man with a jackhammer and a look of concentration on his face methodically tears up the sidewalk.

A girl and her little brother walk down the stairs to the subway, she in a plaid skirt and white shirt, typical school uniform, he in a blazer over white shirt and skewed tie, and he says, "They tore that building down."

"Yeah," she replies, "they tore McDonald's down."

He thinks about this as they walk through the underpass to the subway station before yelling, "I love McDonald's!"

5-19-08 Social Skills

I walk down to the G train at the Metropolitan Street station, through a long, wide hall above the platforms. A tall, lanky, bearded, vaguely homeless (shabby, but not so shabby that he might not just be an impoverished man and poor dresser with bad grooming habits) man walks down to the platform going out to Queens, and as he's about to go down the stairs, he belches.

This belch, it's a world-beater, a monster, a basso-profundo masterpiece of gastro-intestinal fortitude, literally echoing off the stone walls of the subway station. Humbled at this display, I walk downstairs to the Brooklyn side of the platform and see him across the tracks, and without breaking his stride or preparing, he lets loose another belch that resounds like the crack of doom, after which he smiles, almost proudly, and keeps walking to the end of the platform.

5-15-08 Paranoia, Still

The guy who works behind the counter at the corner deli near my building stands outside, bluetooth headset in his ear, and sees me as I wait at the stoplight on my bike. He's a big dude, heavy, medium-height, middle-eastern, hair cropped close to his skull. "Hey, man, can I come along?" he jokes, straightfaced, pointing to my bike, and I joke back that he might not fit, but maybe I could carry him on my back, and we decide that him riding the crossbar would work best.

As I ride away, I feel vaugely uncomfortable without being exactly sure why, except knowing that, for whatever reason, I don't entirely trust him.

5-11-08 BIKES!

Katie now has a bike. She calls him (of course it's a him) Gizmo. After she got off work today we rode through Prospect Park in the gathering dusk and ignored traffic lights all over Brooklyn until it was time to stop and get dinner. As we rolled through the park, she said, "this is the time of day when you were playing ball where, even though you could sort of see your opponents, if they threw the ball to you, it would hit you in the face."

5-10-08 Dumbo is as Dumbo does

Katie and I wandered around Dumbo all day, following a sort of walking tour that we eventually abandoned to follow our whims and explore interesting looking streets. The park underneath Manhattan Bridge was full of people, since the sun was shining and the breeze blowing off the water was cool. A small girl, four or five years at the oldest, watched over by her daddy, was crawling on the rocks down by the waterside, and I was amazed, not at her bravery, but at his. She snaked across the rocks on all fours, occasionally standing up on very unsteady footing in her pink little shoes, wobbling there while she planned out her next move, and he calmly stood by and watched, just out of reach, letting her risk, and struggle, and almost fall, while still being close at hand, in case anything really dangerous went down.