A very recent conversation between my officemate and I:

she: "mumble, shit..."
me: "did i hear you cuss? you know i don't stand for cussin' in the officeplace."
:pause:
she: "fuck you."

we both try to act professional, but we both fail. though, despite this story as evidence, i think i fail more than she does.

I can't Believe We're Still In New York City, Vol. ???:

The sun is bright and their air is damp, pleasantly morning cool - crickets and the smell of the ocean. I'm at work in the field and my colleague is saying, "...the seagulls pick up the crabs from the shore and drop them in this square to open them up. Two days ago one hit me in the shoulder!..."

I'm daydreaming. Miles and miles away.

I Can't Believe This Is My Life, Vol. ???:

The phone rings at 7.29 AM. "Sir, the car service you requested is on location at 1071 Intervale Avenue."

Real New York

There's nothing quite like walking through the garment district in the morning. Box trucks are idling while men push racks of clothings around, taking up sidewalk and street space, yelling at each other in classic NYC accents. In these narrow side streets it feels like walking through a New York City that's a little bit more real than some of the cleaner places where the sun shines with more clarity.

Of course, I'm well aware that it's foolish to romanticize some notion of a realer, authentic New York. All that does is play silly games trying to compare New York City to the city that lives in postcards, and movies from the 1990s about people who move here (single, to work for a magazine and think about their love life - heterosexual) somewhat unprepared for life in New York City. Charicatures and fantasies, as if New York City needed to be romanticized.

It doesn't! It just needs a general acknowledgement that everything that happens is real, and that nothing - or, perhaps everything - is just as "so New York" as anything else, to take a phrased that was overused by an intoxicated and somewhat idiotic public commentor on a friend's wedding ("How much you love each other is just so New York, and how you met, such a great story, just so New York, and I see the two of you together for a long long time, with so many stories, and so New York..."). The Starbucksification of New York - damn near all of Manhattan now, not to mention the more profitable parts of the other boroughs - is as real as the interesting pockets full of sweating, swearing, duct tape and tin.

Riding through the Bronx on the MetroNorth - seeing handpainted signs for small auto parts businesses - tagged-up brownfiends behind barbed wire.

Last week, I was involved in conversation which included a short bit with somebody describing herself as a nonhegemonist.

My exposure to all of the spit-and-polish of midtown does strange things for me. I see more suits and taxicabs on a daily basis than I care for. I've actually spent nine dollars on an unsatisfactory lunch, and I've also tried to find food at seven PM and failed. Fortunately there's always the $1/slice pizza place several Avenues over - hmm: in the garment district. Where I stand with my bike, back to the wall, watching the trucks and handcarts.

The garment district really is a funny bubble. Funny like the dirty diner across the street from Madison Square Garden - the Tick Tock Diner, where you can pay a couple bucks for coffee and fries and sit there for an undetermined (unlimited?) period of time withoug being bothered - unless you consider the offer of a refill (free, of course, otherwise it wouldn't be a diner, would it?) to be a bother - which I do not.

I imagine that tourists see the Tick Tock Diner, imagine that it's special because it's a diner in New York City. They have a meal there, and are satisfied, until they realize that they've used up one of their finite number of meals in New York City on perfectly ordinary - satisfied in being unsurprised - diner, just like the one out on county road 141, just outside of town, near the truck stop.

Explanation: I guess I think that every tourist is from a town - not small, but certainly not large, near enough to a large city, but definitely not a part of the city, nor a suburb, a distinct unit - in the midwest.

How right or wrong am I?

Two things that are really weird are on my mind.

One is my strange desire to get in to altercations with strangers. When I'm crossing the street, I slow down, daring that SUV that's turning through the crosswalk to come too close to me. I stand on the subway platform, reading a book, minding my own business, but expecting or waiting for somebody to brush by me and knock the book out of my hands so that I can let out an exasperated "Excuse me!"

I'm not sure why. Psychoanalyze me.

The other odd thing is walking down a corridor in an office. Doors half-open, doors closed, the clickety-clack of keyboards, murmering of telephone conversations. Always, somebody's disembodied voice trickles from an unidentifiable source, around a corner or through a wall. Somewhere, a telephone is ringing. It's an uncomfortable, hypoxic, hypnotic effect.

In an odd turn of events, I have a very nice thing. A new bicycle frame, possibly a redundancy in my slim fleet, but the offer was too good to pass up. A classic 1970s track frame, built by an acknowledged master, with a beaten-up paint job and an owner who's too big for it. The price I got was better than good, and so I started aquiring a few parts for it - used cranks, a used front wheel, a cog. I'm still looking for a rear wheel and pedals that I can put on it permanently so I don't have to swap back and forth between it and my daily rider, but quite frankly, since building it up late last week for a weekend's worth of beautiful weather and riding around, I've barely gotten off it. I've even commuted on it.

That, of course, brings up questions in my head about the smartfulness of riding "brakeless" in city traffic, but I consider myself a careful and skilled rider and have geared down, letting me accelerate and decelerate with greater ease. I've had no problems so far, except for the occasional bump of my foot against the front wheel - the frame has significant toe overlap, which takes some getting used to.

Fortunately, I've got the opportunity. Winter has not lived up to the expectation that it would force me from my bike and into moody restlessness. It's been a curious winter. Temperatures in the single digits in early January and nothing bur balmy since. We were all lightly dressed for the Memorial Ride for Fallen Cyclists this past weekend; we all sweated our asses off at the New Years Eve Alleykitten. We sniffed curiously at the gas smell on Monday morning.

Those of us trapped at desks only heard about the brief moment or two of snow flurries that fell this morning, after commuting hours.

Sometimes in the middle of the week, it's hard to stay focused when you're looking forward to the end of the week. My band Maxwell's Demon is playing a show down in Washington DC, and I'm ready to skeedaddle from work on Friday afternoon, have a dinner party in Brooklyn, bike back up for some sleep and leave town early on Saturday morning to turn the amplifiers up. After all... the boys are back in town!

In an ongoing conversation with myself about how to deal with life and time, I realized that last year, in quiet little Bridgeport, I felt that the days were far too long; now, in the big and busy new york city, they're far too short. my need for private space, i realize, is manifested in how i view the world around me - see the last entry as my moment of finding time, space, and quiet in a city that hides that all very well. In fact, it does more than hide it; sometimes it convinces me that it's not there.

In a state of perpetual vagabondery I seek to create routines; routines become overwhelming and I seek to break them. I feel as though I'm filling up my days, which perhaps should come as no surprise as the days shorten into December. I can chose between being bored and being tired, but boredom is tiresome and fatigue is wearying anyway.

And so the need for vacation, or spring, or both all at once, presents itself again.

Yesterday, I had my 30-day new-employee check-in with human resources. It was brief; mostly, the very nice HR lady was checking to make sure I had gotten my medical insurance cards. No, I told her. After saying, "Hmmm, I can't believe that!" a few times (to which I replied, "No, really. I didn't get them. Yes, I'm sure."), she said she'd look in to it. An hour later I got an email from her assistant telling me that she had put them in my box. I replied, "Ah, my box. Great. What's my box, and where do I find it?" Apparently there's an inter-office mail system that nobody told me about. I've got a box.

I had been afraid of getting a job that offers eight hours a day of senses-dulling mindlessness. I don't think this job will offer that, and that's good. Perks include a very pleasant officemate, and a casual dress code. Jeans and a sweater, today. Some days I barely change out of bike clothes. I do add deodorant. It's necessary.

Sometimes it's hard for me to figure out how to interact with people. Nodding and smiling in passing in hallways is a pretty good way but them somebody breaks the I'm-too-busy-for-interaction wall and tries to engage me in pleasantries! What do I do? "Uh, good. How are you?" Good. Passed that one okay. This is not my ideal environment and I think that my ability to demonstrate basic social may suffer.

A lot of environments cause this. Not just for me, but for everyone. Elevators: nobody talks in them. Why not? What's wrong with greeting the eight people with whom you sardine yourself for a vertical journey to your workspace? Why pretend you don't notice them? Why are some people so startled by a simple "Hello"?

Yeah, yeah, I know, I just wrote about how I'm startled by a simple "hello." I'm still figuring out how to behave. Once I figure it out, I'll start disrupting it. Promise.

"You gotta be crazy." I hear it all the time. Coworkers, the UPS guy who's always hanging around my work building's loading dock, or anybody else I engage in conversation who can't fathom the idea of riding a bike in New York City tell me that I must be crazy.

I guess I am. It's really unsafe out there and it's really frustrating, too. One second I'm flying down Lexington with plenty of space on my left and right and the next moment a bus is pulling out in front of me while a cargo truck behind me lays on the horn. All I wanna do is cruise safely--why is everyone honking at me?

Some days are better than other. Last week was terrible. I had so many close calls--looking down a one-way street at a red light, seeing nothing, and proceeding only to realize that I had looked down the wrong way of the one way. Getting bumped by a minivan going around a cab. Getting threatened by a cabbie in an SUV who pulled next to me (setting off the alarm: danger! asshole is attempting to contact me! i feel threatened!), basically threatening to commit vehicular assault if I continue to get in his way. And a bunch of the usual stuff--getting honked at and yelled at when riding in a lane, which is perfectly legal--just making me a whole lot aggravated, angry, frustrated, upset, and scared. And, also, violent. I've started feeling like it's more necessary to have my u-lock accessible in order to brandish it at an aggressive driver.

This morning I reminded myself that if I take off somebody's sideview mirror (called "u-lock justice" by people who probably talk about it more than they do it and do it more frequently than they should) because I'm pissed at them for driving like an asshole, it's not going to help me a half a mile down the road when somebody passes me on the right and then attempt to turn left across a lane--my lane--of traffic.

Reminding myself of this during my ride to work today helped me to stay calm and remember why biking is fun and that I can chose to have it be more or less fun.

In other bicycle-related news, I've been meaning to replace my chain before it damages my chainring and my cog. See, under stress, chains stretch and then wear down the teeth of the chainring and cog to the point where a new chain won't evenly and smoothely sit on the old chainring and cog. This is undesirable and it means that you should have spent $20 on a new chain several months ago, but now you've got to spend several times that on a new chainring and cog. I've been having odd dreams lately, and I dreamt that I checked my chainring for wear and found it comically, unusably, wacky-in-a-way-that-only-dreams-can-provide worn and destroyed.