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2003-05-20 - 11:28 a.m. listening to the fugees just like the last time i lived in brooklyn. this album makes me think of shivering in hoodies, drinking on the stoop with all sorts of people who had been absent from my life for years, who i could see now that i was living in new york again. living in a pretty neighborhood a stone's throw away from prospect park, everything colourful and calm. i was alone, and lonely but in a sweet way, walking around shocked that i could live in a city this amazing. shocked that i could live in a nice, huge apartment in one of the fanciest neighborhoods in brooklyn for four hundred dollars a month. barely eating, barely dreaming, simaultaneously loving & hating. josef told me that someone important was waiting for me in brooklyn. i realize now that he was right, just off by a hundred miles or so. what would i have done if i hadn't gone. that album in my ears all the time, on the F train, little references to brooklyn i wouldn't have caught otherwise. where you are explains so much, it means so much. i live on the other side of prospect park now; in a tiny apartment in a loud neighborhood. i am annoyed with my life during the week & savoring it on the weekends. i am glad to have a job, but god damn is it killing my mind. i work at a publishing company and right now i am laying out books; they are surveys of consultants, financiers and lawyers talking about their workplaces. you'd be sickened to see how many times the word "sweatshop" comes up and i want to grab them by their imaginary ties, pull until they turn purple and have to listen. i want to scream YOU ARE SO AFFLUENT. YOU ARE NOT WORKING IN AN UNVENTILATED FACTORY FOR PENNIES A DAY. YOU GET THOUSAND-DOLLAR BUDGETS FOR DINNERS WITH CLIENTS AND NONE OF YOU NEED THAT MEAL. NONE OF YOU. YOU CAN TAKE A FUCKING CAB HOME AND KNOW WHERE YOUR NEXT MEAL IS COMING FROM. and it is a little (operative word: little) sad that these lawyers spend a hundred hours a week at work, but come on. every day i sit at my desk almost shaking with rage at these fucken people, how much they have and how much they complain about it. and hating myself for participating in it. i bought the sweetest clunker bike in south jersey this weekend. my life is so much better, as was predicted, with a bike in it. yesterday i got off work & rode down to union square, tasting death and not caring. so what if i spend 8 hours a day under flourescent lighting, i am free the rest of the time. lately i've been thinking that the magical things in this city are being hidden from me, but sitting at union square i saw a kid walking around with a parrot on his shoulder, absolutely trusting the bird was going to stay with him; and i realized that i just need to be better about looking for them. then a gay guy passed me, talking on his cellphone, "it was the weirdest thing. his face was perfectly calm as he punched her again and again." a feeling of unreality swept over me as i took the 4 back to my new fake temporary "home" and slept for 12 hours, not even noticing how much my futon hurts anymore.
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