everything is new but also familiar: slaloming through the construction on 5th ave until taking the sidewalk next to the cemetery, lit by blinking clouds of fireflies. late nights around 19th street, you might see breakdancers in the middle of the street.

we're always getting older, always getting further away.

all along the dreary ride up the A414, I wanted to take photos of road signs: triangles with exclamation points inside; the equivalent of our yield signs that say give way; mysterious symbols with no obvious meaning.

I can tell I'm going to finish my book on one of my subway rides yesterday, so I dig around a box in the apartment looking for something new, landing on Invisible Man, which I've always meant to read. later on, someone is talking about works of fiction that go on for a good two-hundred pages longer than they should. example? Invisible Man. I am quite emphatic in my "i just started reading that today!" not at all bothered that I've just started a book that is a classic representation of books that are too long.

I probably find such coincidences more interesting or meaningful than they actually are.

they might be on sale, which will seem like the perfect reason to buy them in and of itself. but they might also inspire you to clean off the kitchen table when you get home and stop using it as a dumping ground.

even better the flowers might catch the attention of an authoritative employee who will tell you to go ahead to the customer service desk instead of standing on the "express" line that is literally snaked halfway across the store. you'll feel a little nervous leaving the line with such a dubious password, but those flowers could end up saving you from fifteen minutes of meandering by pricey baked goods and rows of chocolate bars.

if you're extra lucky, the A train will be just sitting there waiting for you when you get down to the platform. and it will feel like each little thing was meant to be.

there's a guy driving down grand street, windows open all the way, blaring that journey song. you can tell he's in a good mood, even though the traffic is, as always, terrible. but he squeezes through the intersection before the light changes, just barely clearing mercer. then the light at broadway turns green, and he's gone.

several moments later, I hear someone belt out a block away, "don't stop, believin'!"

then on a late friday night/early saturday morning ride home, the official weekend was heralded by a guy tunelessly belting along to show tunes on his headphones. I'm pretty sure he was not only singing along but envisioning some extravagant, choreographed sequence in his head. thankfully he only rode one stop. it kind of reminded me of that scene from freaks and geeks.

I look away in the same manner that I might react when walking down the street and realizing I've just inadvertently made eye contact with a college-aged kid with a clipboard in hand. it's a totally bizarre joke, and I'm just waiting for the "Do you have a minute to help [insert cause]?" equivalent when he unnecessarily clarifies, "It's not really mine, but it is beautiful."

there is really nothing at all to say in response.

now there are 160 steps from the lower subway platform, up to the station, through the turnstiles, up to the street, (a few blocks walk north with a slight incline, ) into the building, and finally up the four flights to the apartment. there are still wooden escalators in the older part of a mid-town department store. there are memories that surface, like evenings when the elevator would stop at every floor on its way down and someone would quip, guess we got the local. there are subway tunnels where you can see daylight shining into the tunnels, others that require elevators between platforms and stations; they might even be on the same line.

the island is only 13 miles by 2 (at its widest), yet it feels like you traverse hundreds of miles up and down daily.

my first day of the train, a dad and his son kept stealing each other's noses back and forth. occasionally a nose would get popped into a mouth and chewed until the nose owner would pry the chewing mouth open and take the nose back, sometimes wiping it off with a few quick passes. attaching a nose involved hammering one fist on top of the other, but removing one only required a gentle tug.

from the earlier temp records, I can see this is from a reception job at a place called JP Strategies (November 20th, $12/hour). it was an investment company and everyone there seemed incredibly unhappy. I hung up and misdirected phone calls throughout the day. the contact name Lydia brings back memories of one of the crankiest ladies I've ever met. she was annoyed because the temp who was supposed to be there all week had gotten sick after the first day. there was some confusion about whether the original temp would be healthy enough to return the following day or if they would need me again. she gave me some attitude that the temp agency, and me by association, didn't seem to have their stuff together. one of the agency reps called me later to apologize and assure me that they wouldn't send me back there regardless of the health of the other temp.

at some point during the day I slipped out from behind the reception desk to take this photo, worried one of those miserable workers would suddenly appear to catch me in the act, and I'd get in trouble.

it's strange that all of this represents things that happened five years ago, but then appropriate to find it now that I am headed back to nyc.

2 june 02
we drove off early in the morning — weather warm yet dry & only decoratively cloudy. I am snapping pictures from the moving car. so many vistas, so many dead animals. driving standard is interesting. the gears between second and fifth are pretty inconsequential. the country might have just widened.
we drive into columbus while the sun is still up.

(undated, but likely the following day)
it was kind of too cold to swim in the creek, but we went anyway.

---

woke up to cloudy skies & thunder rumbles and a chaotic house shuddering around tya's pink room. pink actually isn't the right word for it.

from quilt critiques with nicole & jeremy in indianapolis — dense with heat, to a headache & sleep in the car towards illinois. I missed flat farm lands and clouds. celia calls just as we are headed into gary, indiana (home of industrial awe), & we are warned about rainy weather ahead. we are heading into chicago as the storm is moving out, right over us. the clouds clear, the sun lowers & turns orange, and a double rainbow darkens in the sky.

"we write about our life, not to see it as it was, but to see it as we wish others might see it, so we may borrow their gaze and begin to see our own life through their eyes, not ours. only then, perhaps, would we begin to understand our life story."

When she dials the number for the first time, she feels a sense of amazement at the pattern the sequence makes on the keypad — not yet knowing whether this code will be something she'll memorize, or if this folded slip of paper will get lost, misfiled like the memories of so many other girls before. She indulges herself this "so many" distinction as the phone rings. The answering machine picks up, and she is forced to decide: message or no?

so I can tell you today that on November 4, 2002, I worked 5 hours at the office for Young Audiences of New York for $12/hr. I took the Q to the V to get to the building on East 53rd St between Madison and 5th Ave, up on the 8th floor. Emily K. was my contact person. The day seems to have gone well:

phones, forgery, & envelope stuffing. did not hang up or misdirect anyone all day.

even better is the following day when I worked an hour and forty-five minutes, but got paid for the four-hour minimum, for Fir Tree Partners (looks like I took the 2/3 to the 4/5):

Jackie was flustered, all in a tizzy over less than 100 folders [that needed to be stuffed]. I could see it would not take me the full 4 hrs right away. I got a can of coke and listened to the boys yell across the office to each other. It was billed as a real estate co., but was actually an investment firm. the managing director's last name: Tannenbaum. On the train home, watching a woman read the last pages of Nobody's Fool by Russo. She looked so sad, a defined frown on her face. It did not appear to be a good ending, to result in such sadness. my section of the car was very literary indeed. 11 of 14 were reading. plus two on our adjacent small bench. mostly newspapers and magazines.

sadly those are the only entries with descriptions.

among the objects I seem to collect without any effort on my part are little books of all kinds. maybe about 75% of them are entirely unused. some of them were enlisted into specific data collection projects and hold a few pages of tantalizingly interesting entries that stop all too soon.

the best one I've discovered so far this time is the little chococat notebook that I used in 2002, though it curiously begins with evidence of events that happened later than others near the back of the notebook. it begins:

a list of short story writers, likely names collected after I asked for recommendations in a zine. who knows what cost $185.00 but I doubt it had anything to do with the writers listed below.

on the following page I find ctc's cell phone number on a post-it with what appears to be the number and extension from when she worked at Zagat. then another nyc cellphone number I don't recognize. a six-digit number I recognize as the shared po box in Brooklyn.

there's a page that notes my ongoing story idea, the one I worked on in November. I kind of wish I'd had these notes then.