my friends sam and zak have their own production company called downtown theatre. friday i went to opening night of their new play, trinity of two, which is running through march 13th.

generally, they do a play every year, sometimes more. when i first moved to new york, i provided unskilled labor to prepare for a show they did in tribeca, which began with this huge black room. i painted the huge black room white, and then painted it black again. and then i painted it black one more time, because you could still see the white through it. it was a lot of paint. and a lot of paint to breathe. the stage manager and i did this together, and halfway through black coat number two, we admitted to each other that the black paint was making us crazy.

i didn't paint anything for this new show, incidentally. but i would have.

there's a guy from china named chunguang who works in my department. we were getting coffee the other day.

chunguang: josh, when was the last time you shave your hair?

josh: cut my hair?

chunguang: yes, when was last time you cut your hair?

josh: maybe three months ago. a while.

pause

chunguang: you look like jesus.

there's a group of three middle-aged guys who sometimes ride the bus i'm on in the mornings. they talk constantly, and everyone can hear them. and since it's impossible not to listen, i know one is on probation for something, and another talks about still living with his mother. that kind of thing.

one of them has a verbal tic that causes him to begin or end every sentence with "between you and me." he has a deep, even voice, and it really sounds more like be-tween you an me.

be-tween you an me. be-tween you an me. if they're around, you hear it a lot. if he gets worked up about something, he'll say "fuckin be-tween fuckin you and fuckin me."

there was a day when they all three got off, and it was suddenly quiet, and some other bus rider, a young guy, started making fun to the girl he was sitting next to. they clearly didn't know each other, but he started talking to her, adding "between you and me" to everything. he was trying to flirt, but only succeeding in a lame, creepy way. getting off, he said, "between you and me, it was nice meeting you."

outside the window where our computer sits, there's a fire escape and a tree overlooking the street. lately, if it's sunny, there's a hawk who's taken to sitting on the branches.

in general, when we walk around near the windows, he doesn't seem to care. on sunday morning i opened up the window and whistled at him, and he turned his head all the way around over his shoulder, like birds do, to stare at me, but he otherwise remained undisturbed. so, this blithe unconcern made me think i needed a picture of him, and only one taken from out on the fire escape would do.

of course, as soon as i was outside he took off, flapflapflapflap! and he was over 33rd street someplace and then gone.

thinking of it afterwards, i think this indicates i am becoming a new yorker. not because i am fascinated by a bird--"look out there, it's a bird, how'd that get out there?"--or because i don't think it'll mind my walking out to point a shiny metal object at it. rather, it is because i didn't think anything about walking out on the fire escape in boxer shorts. in fact, perhaps this is what really scared him away.

me: look, he doesn't care at all if i get close to him.

hawk: dude, you gotta put some pants on. (leaves)

today it's cold outside, but it's also very sunny. in fact, it looks beautiful, and there is a combination of two things at work on me--the sunniness added to my intense desire not to be here--and these two things a second ago made me wonder what the ride home on the school bus was going to be like.

i'm thirty, almost thirty-one, and i have not ridden the school bus in, um, fifteen years, but somehow i associate such a ride with sun and restlessness to leave. clearly, right?

now. unrelated, except in a loose-associations kind of way, is this: last night i dropped into 1020, and tim the barman was blasting motley crue. i thought it was great. i said, "tim, i love this," and he said, in his shifty way, "everybody likes a little motley crue, right right right. wouldn't be human if you didn't."

back when i was fourteen, i think i was scared of the people who brought their little walkman tape players on the bus and played motley crue really loud through tinny little speakers. all those kids seemed really wild, and i was quiet, so i thought it was too much for me. of course, i would listen to DRI, but i would do it really seriously and pay attention to all the words, so it seemed a lot different.

of course, now motley crue seems ridiculous, but i like it in a comfort food sort of way. you hear motley crue and you know that there's nothing dangerous going on and nothing bad's going to happen and you're going to grow up and have girlfriends and the soviet union is not going to kill us all. it's just ridiculous and happy.

but strange how it wasn't comfortable at all at the time. it seemed dangerous and wild and they were singing and screaming about orgies and devil worship. ah, but not really. it was all just greasy kids' stuff.

and now that i think of it, my current all-time comfort food, pork shoulder barbecue. . . i never ate that as a kid.

when i wake up with a headache and i go stare out the window and rub my eyes for a while and then suddenly think, no wait, i didn't drink anything last night. i came home, read, and went to bed. . . at that moment i feel cheated.

headaches are for drinking and for nothing else. let's get this straight. i might have to file a complaint.

in college i used to get headaches, whether i drank or not, but eventually that went away. i would bring a bottle of tylenol to breakfast on saturday morning, and my friend nyles would say, "that fits you. you seem like you should be kind of tortured."

on monday i went to see neko case, and in the middle of the show she and the lead singer of visqueen stabbed each other to death on stage. fake blood flew everywhere, and they ended up stabbing and wrestling on the ground. neko finished the show covered in blood.

she said, "we were trying to think of something anti-valentine's day to do, and we figured a sapphic double-suicide would be good."

earlier in the century, wordiness was in. i mean, now we'd just say "LIBRARY". short, sweet, no confusion. but really, that's very vague, because a private collection can be a library. any bunch of books owned by one entity is a "library".

so more specifically, that cool old building where you use your card to get out some books is a free circulating library. and some poor son of a bitch thought that was important enough to carve out on the facade, in stone. i love it. that's just cool.

when i look out over a city at night, all the little lights make me think of all the little people. each light shines all by itself, a yellow or a white dot. in daylight, a city doesn't make me think of much, but in the dark all the lights switched on remind me of each person who had to turn on each one.

for each person there is a collection of stories they tell over and over to their friends. these are the things they remember about what they have done, and the things they think define themselves. i can't speak for everyone, but i in particular think of myself as an accumulation of stories. that is the measure of me.

if you know me, you will eventually amass enough stories to understand what i am. they come out of order, like cards, and they can probably be puzzled together in several different ways, making me several slightly-different people.

your taste may vary, but the best stories are not the obvious ones. the nodal points of your life are probably not the momentous occasions. rather, they are more subtle. you might not ever realize which they are, and your friends will find it no easier to tell. if you want to, you could spend a lifetime puzzling out which these are. perhaps they even change. i believe this puzzling is a noble passtime.

how's that for obtuse?

i like to read the waiter rant. once upon a time i worked in a restaurant, and a couple bars. people who have done that always think of themselves as being in a secret society together, marked for life, secret handshake, etc, because you see people at their best and at their worst.

but i don't have to tell you that. you already know that.

i thought of a random story today. once, when i was working in a restaurant, a woman came in and ordered a cannoli to go. i told her we didn't have cannoli. she responded, deadpan serious, "it's for a doctor." pause. and you know what?--we still didn't have cannoli!

everything is relative, my friends. it is fifty degrees today in new york city, and it is the most beautiful day i can remember.

today, i am feeling rather detached. truly, i am aloof, as evinced by an odd literalness, which i rarely have. for instance, just now i looked down at all the people on the street, and i thought look at all those people down on the street. and right now i am thinking yes, typing, yes.

there was a time when twenty-year-old josh came home from work to a dark apartment and watched movies. i don't think i ate. i don't remember. i have a vivid memory of watching goodfellas one night. that year, i think i felt like this all the time.