me: hey.

jamaican guy i work with (in his pseudo-british accent): hi, how are you doing?

(pause)

do you know that they call you jesus?

i woke up late yesterday, sunday, which was a minor disaster because i had a long run to do. it was in the upper 90's a little after noon, when i was well into my route in central park. near the two-hour mark, i felt the familiar you are on the verge of very soon feeling like shit, alarm.

i ran by the water fountain, but a line of 25 people was crowded around. my god, i thought, and made my way three or four minutes down the road, turned around, and came back. the line was still there. what i saw was mostly tourists filling up water bottles and rinsing their hands.

the hero: (running to the front of the line) i just need to sneak in up here for a quick drink. i don't have anything to fill. i'll just be a second. sorry! (starts to drink, breaking the line)

line representative: hey! you asshole. don't you know that everybody runs? you're not special, everyone runs. asshole.

the hero: (finishes) sorry! (runs away)

line representative: you're an asshole! asshole!

Mark told me I absolutely had to talk to the guys who work in the technical bookstore. Unable to find what I wanted, The History of Electrochemistry, I went to the customer search computer, and it told me I was right—they didn’t have it.
        A bored, grey-haired man in coke bottle glasses leaned one hand on the counter. “Help you?”
        Reflexively, I said, “No thanks.” Then, in my head, walking away—Oh shit, I’m supposed to talk to these guys. Don’t say no thanks again. Think of something to ask. Go back to the service desk and ask something.
        I returned, and a different man was at the counter. He sat militarily straight, with a well-groomed moustache and an outdoorsman’s hat.
        “Hi, I’m looking for Fire In The Mind, by George Johnson.”
        Immediately, touch-typing, he attacked the keyboard. He spoke rapid-fire: “Is that Fire Of The Mind, Fire In The Mind, Fire On The Mind?” click click click click click.


powell's technical bookstore, from the wikipedia page.

        “In the Mind.”
        click click click click click, click, clickclick, CLICK CLICK! “Sorry no copies.”
        “Thanks. How about A History of Electrochemistry?”
        CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK! click, clickclickclick!!! “Sorry no copies.”
        “Thanks.”
        Walking away, I saw the original guy, grey-haired, bored, at the reserve desk looking slowly through a book. Behind him was a collection of antique typewriters.
        I walked up, “That really long typewriter is cool.”
        Slowly, he looked up, and then back down. He flipped a page. “Believe it or not, some of us used to get by with machines like that.” He flipped another page, reading.
        I started to walk away. He said, still looking at his book, “Remarkably low maintenance. They really were something.”
        I had to speak. “Yeah, I can’t do computers,” I said.
        Still reading, he raised his eyebrows and flipped the page. He just kept reading.
        I walked back into the books, looking at the history of science section.
        From down the aisle, the man with the moustache walked rapidly towards me, urgently. “I located five copies of Fire In The Mind at the main store down the street. In the science section there, they have them.”
        “Thank you.”
        He rapidly and forcefully returned to his desk.

me: we'll meet you at six-thirty, provided we can figure out what bus to take. we have four maps, and none of them has the same things on them. i mean, if this were new york you could figure out how to get across town.

mark: hey! you'd also be sweating your balls off.

mia and i are in portland. currently it's midnight and i'm in the ace hotel, michael jackson is playing, and i'm typing on a laptop i found on the table. it may belong to the hotel.

portland is good. inside, at my most fundamental, i identify with the archetypal teenager who hates everything he sees around him. the consequence of this is that even though i like the place i am, i imagine shades of it through that jaded, upset, indignant mythical teenager in my DNA.

no matter what city i'm in, i think of mocking names you could call it. portland. port-o-let. it just popped into my head on a beautiful day. this isn't effort. it's automatic.