Chronicles Continued

…is when as I am stepping out of the door of my apartment building, onto the sidewalk, the bus I want to take is just pulling up to the bus stop a few feet away.  The closest I get to limo-service.

Stepped into Trader Joe’s last evening around 7 pm with a friend. We were going to ‘buy dinner’ and dine in.  As we stepped inside the door, I thought it strange that shoppers with carts at varying degree of ‘full’ were not milling, but rather standing stationary by the door. Friend immediately said “I’m not doing this”, and turned to leave.  I did not grasp what he meant, nor could I process what I was seeing.  As I too turned to leave, I asked what was wrong? ‘That’s the end of the line’, he said.  I looked back and then realized what I was seeing:  parallel lines that ended at the door, but snaked through the store in order to check out.  That is shopper commitment!

Boarded the subway at W 4th and the smell of defecation was pungent! If you’ve ever encountered an outhouse on a hot summer day, that was about the stench level. Looked around and across the tracks and in total there were 5 persons pushing their belongings in shopping carts, but all were at rest as I surveyed them. The train finally arrived and when I disembarked at the other end in Chinatown, an equally overwhelming smell of dead fish permeated the air. Truly from the frying pan into the fire.

Have I been too engrossed in the series, ‘Touch’?  Just happened to look out my upper story window on a quiet Sunday morn and caught the following vignette: a tall white man with some blonde hair, a shorter dark-haired, olive skin man, standing behind a cab.  In a flash, they took each others hand, kissed the back of it, touched it to their respective foreheads and the white man turned, walked around the trunk and entered the cab.  The other man walked away.  What was that?

One subway car.  He gets on at 14th Street, wheeling a huge bass fiddle, and stands in the entryway of one of the two doors of the car.  She boards at 23rd Street, lugging an equally large bass fiddle and stands in the other entryway of the car.  She never looked at him.  He kept checking her out of the corner of his eye.  I kept wondering what the odds were that they were not going to the same place and why didn’t they at least lug, wheel their instruments to be together in one doorway.  86th Street stop, they both disembark.  He moves faster because his bass is on wheels, she has no wheels so has to hoist it up on her side/back.  He meets her at the subway toll exit.  They speak.

He stands outside a bar-b-que restaurant on 9th Avenue.  I’m not really certain about his connection to the establishment, except that maybe he is there a long time.  My favorite thing about him is the damage to his belly, and the ‘fix-it’ bandaid.

‘Raising a baby in a New York apartment, is like growing an oak tree in a thimble’

This is an advert from Manhattan storage.. would be even better for a Westchestor realtor

It was the quiet way he asked for money when I passed him, seated on a plastic crate with a pair of crutches laying [lying?] across his lap.  I was a half-mile away from home, and had just come up from the subway; I could only experience the back of his head.  I walked by, I was tired, but the voice nagged.  A half block later, I stopped and turned round.  I approached him: “Cologne”, I said, “Is that you?” His eyes were bleary, his face looked disheveled, and his clothes well slept in.  He nodded a yes.  He then asked for money.  “I’m really hungry”, he said. ‘So’, I said, “It is you!  Huh.  We had a conversation the other day, a long one…”  I could see him trying to sort me out from all the other folk of a certain description…”And”, I continued, “Now you have the crutches and there’s something else going on with you.”  He focused his bloodshot eyes on me, “I’m sorry to disappoint you Ma’am”, he said, “But I’m Hungry.” [Appetite apparently kicks in when one is coming down from something?]. “It’s not about me, Cologne”, I said, feeling more helpless than ever; all I could do was turn around and walk away.

2nd of April, a melodious, wailing, gentle sax in the lower regions of the Chinatown subway stop and the song playing is a Christmas carol.