Tuesday, October 08, 2002

what I’ve wound up doing,

what I’ve wound up doing, since I’m having trouble taking notes on the little crap that makes for a good quick blog, is reprinting some stuff I wrote during the last 50 days of 1999, when I gave myself a project to write 25 essays in 50 days.  In retrospect they mostly suck, but a few can be salvaged.  That’s why a shinehead like me writes about his haircuts.  The hair on my chest, however, is luxuriant and hirsuitabulous.  But that’s not barbershop hair.

But I’m getting good enough to take a note or two, like the vignette this am on - of course - the 38L, where two men were talking as I took a seat; they faced each other across the crowded aisle.  The speaker mumbled, seemed reluctant, didn’t want to be overheard; the listener was pale, blonde, intense, thin, hunched forward in his chair to get every word, every inflection, watching with hungry pale eyes… the speaker, heavy, darkhaired, olive skinned, was talking about how he liked his apartment because people left him alone there; the other man bobbed his head and enthusiastically agreed - “that’s right, yeah, privacy is a wild thing...” I got the feeling that he didn’t have such a good idea what the other guy was describing.  You don’t discuss privacy interests across the knees of strange commuters.  And some of those guys were pretty strange…