If you could see me now, oh, you'd be laughing. It's absolutely pouring outside, with a bit of thunder and lightning. I'm sitting at my computer, feeling adequately contemplative, playing recently-downloaded plaintive songs. But not loud enough that it drowns out the sound of the rain outside the open window. I was standing outside watching it rain, thinking how nothing makes you more contemplative than rain and sunsets. So here I am, in a terribly contrived moment, doing my best to feel a little down, yet hopeful, as the song playing dictates, thinking how nice it'd be if I could write a nice, meaningful, profound passage.I ate too much pasta tonight, as I often do, and I'm feeling a little uncomfortable. I want to lie down, but I think i'd throw up. The room is a bit messy, and I should probably be cleaning it up. I know Nora makes little efforts while I'm at work to tidy up the place, and kicks shoes in frustation about the room. Then I come home from work and mess it all up. Just a little. I'm not proud of myself. Speaking of Nora, she wrote most of the entry on the 12th. Most of the middle section, from the beach till the story before saturday night. She didn't want me saying, because she thought she did a pretty good job of impersonating me. I disagreed, though at times I was a bit embarrassed at how well she picked up my style and word choices. In a few places. Though other places, it was terrible.
Anyway, I'm sad that Nora's leaving next week. It'll be really weird not having her around. Plus, after seeing The Others on Saturday, I've been spending a good amount of the lights-out time giving myself the creeps. It was a very tense walk last night to the bathroom, then to the kitchen and back, in the dark.
Anyway, yesterday Nora and I met up in the early afternoon and, after a nice lunch at Burger King, went up to Central Park. We had planned to sit around the Park for a while, but ended up going to the zoo instead. I used my expired Parks ID and got in for free. First we went to the children's petting zoo, which was actually a little cooler than the regular zoo. They had all sorts of animals to touch. Though the smell of goats and cows and sheep really grosses me out. More precisely, it's really the smell of their waste. And I'd never seen a llama up close, at least not that I remember, and it really kind of gave me the creeps. That long neck and little head. Plus, every time it raised its head and looked up, I was sure it was going to spit on me. I'm not sure why, only that I heard that llamas do this. No wait, isn't that camels? Or is it both. Anyway, that was a concern. Plus, my pant cuffs were picking up dirt and/or feces, and I didn't like that. There was a huge, ancient-looking pot-bellied pig there. I thought it'd look a lot better with an apple in its mouth. There were all sorts of hollow cement constructs there too, that were built to resemble animal bodies, so that you could stick you head in and pretend to be a rabbit or a turtle or whatever. Nora and I found this greatly amusing.
Me and Nora in the little bunny rabbit thingies.So then we went over to the regular zoo, and saw the regular animals that we weren't allowed to touch. And for good reason. I don't think it'd be good to let little kids too close to polar bears or monkeys or red pandas. Though you could probably get a fairly successful series of videotapes or tv shows out of such a situation.
So then it started to rain, so we ditched the walking through the park plan. The next part of the plan was to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. So we walked arm in arm for a bit, discussing the logistics of walking arm in arm, whether the hand in the pocket was ok and whatnot. After about 15 feet, I though walking palm in palm, as if we were competitive ballroom dancers about to enter the dance floor, would be more fun. And we made our way down the stone-paved sidewalk of 5th Avenue. It started to drizzle, but the trees were providing adequate cover, and the walk was ok. For a block or two. Then it started to pour, and we dashed under the biggest tree that was nearby. So we stood there for a while, and it just kept raining harder and harder. And we just hugged the trunk of the tree, slowly getting soaked. the tree provided a lot of cover actually, but it was raining way to hard to keep us dry. It was kind of cool though to be out in the pouring rain. If Nora and I were boyfriend/girlfriend, or if we'd been casually making out lately, the whole scene would have been very cinematic. Young couple, caught out in a thunderstorm, huddled together under a tree, warming each other's breath with their own. Maybe a tight embrace as thunder struck. I'm not saying I was hoping for that or anything, but, being a child of television and whatnot, I'm always seeing life as a movie. And coulda been a good scene had Nora and I been able to take romantic libterites with each other. Of course, that not being the case, we just sort of hugged the tree trunk at different parts, and kept getting wet. And then Nora was like "There's no way I'm going into the fucking art museum like this." "Like what?" I said. "Soaking wet, stupid." By this point it was pretty clear that there wasn't going to be any smooches to cool music under a tree.
Nora, so sad...When the rain let up a bit, we darted across the street to an apartment building awning, which provided a lot more cover than the tree. So i was like "Ready to go to the museum?" to which she replied "I am not going to the museum like this. I have a little more respect for it than that." Which made me say "It's not like you're having fucking tea with the Queen. Everybody will be soaking wet." But she didn't see it that way, and refused to go in all wet and squaeking on the floor. I explained that the museum had carpets, even though i wasn't actually confident that it did, but she didn't care. Still, we kept walking north toward the Met, which was still 10 blocks away. We darted from awning to awning until it finally stopped raining as we got there. And of course, when we got there, it was closed. "Sorry folks, park's closed. The moose out front shoulda told you." If I took more advantage of living in a city with so many freakin' museums, I'd've remembered that a great number of them are closed on Mondays. Rats. So we hopped on the next downtown bus. Nora wanted to go to the corner of 23rd Street and 5th Ave, where she heard Julia Roberts lived. But we had to make a detour first at the offices of Spin magazine, where Caryn works, so I could fill out some paperwork to get paid for my transcribing work. That took some more walking in the rain, but the bus ride was pleasant enough. The Spin offices were a bit smaller than I'd imagined. I wanted to take Nora there because she and Caryn hadn't met yet, and both were beginning the think the other didn't really exist. As I predicted, they spent a good portion of the time there talking shit about me. What better way for two strangers to bond than shitting on their only common friend? For some reason I couldn't keep all my information straight, and would do things like write my phone number as my address and shit like that. So they talked more shit about that. Fun fun. Then we took a bus down 3rd ave to Cooper Square, the end of that line, and walked to Broadway Lafayette, and came back to Brooklyn. Fun fun.
So we sat around, watched various tv shows, and when I went out to the living room Jed and Nora had their hair fixed up in little rubber bands. So i figured I'd join the fun as well. Oh, look, pictures.
Caryn, me, at in the Spin offices.
So I sleep walked through most of the day at work, then came home, go a haircut, and hung out while Jed and Dylan interviewed people to be the new roommates in the apartment. And I've been sitting around feeling fairly poopy. Talked to Caryn for a good little bit for the first time in a while. We used to speak on a nightly basis when we were both at NYU, but that's faded in recent months. So it was a good reminder. Anyway, it's stopped raining, and Nora's home, and it's late. And another fucking day tomorrow. Oh, poo.
