10/19/96 12:27:56 AM Winter makes my mind spin faster. Quicklier. I'm tired, but feel like going outside and running around the building. Out in the alley behind the building on East End that's right by the East River. can't remember right now exactly where it is, can't remember how to get there, but if I go outside and start running around I know I'll find it. Because I always do. Here I go. Out the door. Yes, there's a lot of air out there. My brain moves more quickly, and I find that I floss more vigorously. Rinse more thoroughly. Repeat more often. Quiet outside. For some reason I've been breathing really quickly all night. Been like this for days. If I was not wearing these heavy winter boots, I'd have run down the block to the river. But I've tried to run places in these boots before, and it feels like I might lose control, the boots might gain more momentum than myself, and I would go hurtling into the water feet first, maybe lucking out and plunging not into the water but onto a patch of crabgrass on Roosevelt Island. 10/19/96 9:26:27 PM It's the next night. Raining like a bastard out there. The F.D.R. highway is closed, and I have this urge to run out there and seize control of it. Skew everything, clobber the bridges and overpasses, make them unsuitable for rush-hour driving. Divide up the lanes, and form leagues. Get some competition going on, turn the yellow lines that usually divide traffic into wild streams of pure energy, then cross the flailing, flaccid paths and wind up in a Bill Murray flick. Bill Murray's a funny guy. Flooding all over the place. None right around here. I have renters insurance, which includes flood coverage. Or underage. So I could get a new piano, TV, aquarium,bed, desk and computer (and a chair) if it keeps raining like this for another several days. Wake up on Thursday and peek through the blinds to see a body of filthy water lapping up against the window. Nah, by then the whole building would have given up, and we'd be washed out to sea. Weather like this is comforting. I can stay home in this weather and feel the activity of the apartments around me. Normally on Saturday night this place feels like a department store or the New York Public Library during non-business hours. Wide open and strangely dangerous. Tonight, though, it's not even 10:00 and already I can hear the stray yelps and rises in conversation which usually occur after midnight. Most nights you can hear the neighbors fucking or getting drunk. They're mostly fucking, though. Sometimes the sounds of fucking come from this apartment. We've all had this conversation, in an impromptu Community Gathering one afternoon while nonchalantly gathering our mail. Blush as hard as we might it does not look like any of us has stopped fucking. Fucking. Fucking. Fucking. Listen to us. We're fucking. We all live together, a bunch of familiar strangers. Fucking like children. Wait, listen to them. They're fucking. Lookit them. Shutup, would you. Look. Listen. Listen to us fucking. Lookit them. Those people are fucking. Lookit those two, they're fucking. You can turn away, but they won't stop fucking. Everywhere you look, people are fucking, someone's fucking someone else. All right, who's fucking? Start fucking. Stop fucking. Keep fucking. Somebody's fucking. Fucking. Fucking. Fucking. Winter is here, and people are fucking. New York City is fucking. Keep fucking, New York. I know not to trust the way Fall makes me feel. When the leaves first start to turn and the air first gets cold I feel wound up and my whole mind turns flaming carthweels, I'm filled with ideas and ambition too big for any city, too senselessly vast for any planet. Then, when the weather gets lousy so does my life. 10/19/96 11:13:19 PM I just spent a good long hour re-living my In-Box from the last year. I'm tingling all over. Bitterness washes over my life, but that's an everyday occurrence, not to be confused with anything having any relevence to what is happening in front of me. Read the mail from people I never knew. Read the mail from people I got to know after their mail arrived. Read the mail from people I already knew, from relatives, from scientists and priests, from government informants, from those who never could bring themselves to tell me what they do for a living (for fear that I would run a quick WHOIS and then STALK them). Read all the "I had a lovely time with you" messages from all the girls I loved before (and called themorning after, and with whom I was eventually disappointed or bored). Jutta once said "You'll always be bored." I need to thank her for that comment. (pause) (dial the phone) (busy signal) (send the e-mail) OK, I just sent Jutta thanks. She'll probably respond with bitterness and anger, a certain hypothetical indifference, but I hope that she and I will still get together in Florida this January. We planned to swat bats out of our hair(s) and shoot down fat, juicy mosquitos from the porch of her deep-south house. We plan to spend a 4-day weekend in Florida terrorizing intruders and lost tourists with congressionally-approved hunting weapons that will rip your fucking head off. 10/21/96 1:01:30 AM I should be asleep. I'm supposed to get up and work at 7:00 tomorrow morning. Well, at 7:00 I think about getting up, 7:30 I'm stumbling stupid and fish-eyed into the kitchen, which is the wrong direction, so it takes a few more minutes to wind up taking a shower. 8:00 I'm still wasting my ass sitting in the bathtub. 8:30 and the job is not done. Did I was my hair already? Guess I can wash it again. 9:00 and I'm lying around on my big fat ass but everyone I work with is looking around and fidgeting, wondering if this work-at-home-on-your-day-off plan is really working out. 10/22/96 9:59:24pm Looks like I'm going to Vegas next month. For 10 days. Whores, I say. Whores. 10/23/96 11:02:33pm October 23rd, and I'm sleeping a little more normally now. Normallier. These days. It's been 8 years since I had a moment of clarity like the on I had in the Oberlin Conservatory student lounge in 1988. Every day since then I think about it. Sitting at the table, two friends and I talking. They went off on a tangent, spoke betwixt themselves about laundry, and I felt my skull settle against my brain, heard all the sounds I needed to hear and I Was There. October is almost over. This is the month when most of my best friends were born. This is the month when I moved to New York in 1990. If I'd kept records all these Octobers, I think I'd find that this was the month in which occurred that momentous decision upon which I based the next several months of activity. October is when something always snaps. I think I handled it well this time. Crap, snapple, plop.