monday april 16 2001    |    7:20 p.m.

a new york minute:

me: i'm at the wrong hotel. do you think you could call me a cab?
hotel clerk: you're a cab.
me: i'm sorry, what?
h.c.: you're a cab.
me: . . .
h.c.: you asked me to call you a cab and i did.
me: you're hilarious.

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another new york minute:

(greenwich village, corner across from washington square)
man: (sneezes)
me: bless you.
man: thank you.
. . .
man: (sneezes)
me: bless you.
man: they call this the sneezing corner.

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i don't know what to say other than i need to move to new york one way or another.

the interviews went well, i think, but i'll find out if they really did soon enough. one of the people i talked to, an associate editor, gave me three books she'd worked on. she'd be telling me something about one of them, and get up, pull it off her office shelves, and put it in my hands. it wasn't your typical interview i don't think: we talked about vision, and purpose, and the control one gets when placed in a room with windows overlooking times square. and the workload. the other two interviews, with an editor and a v.p., weren't particularly noteworthy. i don't know.

but the city! the city!

i got coiled incense and joss paper at a buddhist supply store in chinatown, and a bag of jasmine tea, and $5 sunglasses from a stand on the street. gawked at the things in the anthropologie store in soho. had homemade mozzarella in little italy. watched impromptu acrobatics in washington square. took the f and then the e from the publisher to the hotel (my second subway ride ever, woohoo). talked to her on the phone for a bit (although we didn't get to meet up, and i didn't make it to the show). was asked for directions. had no pizza the entire time i was there. smoked a cigarette sitting on a bench across from the world trade center, talking things over with my mom. looked all over at exorbitant prices for lofts. sat next to a japanese punk boy in the subway with half-sleeve tattoos as he diligently played on his palm pilot. rode the airport shuttle with a corporate guy who talked to his fiancée on the cell phone the entire way. did not pay $15 for a "prada" handbag. did not speak chinese to the tea store lady, because all i can say is "hello" and "bottoms up." smoked a cigarette outside the wall street journal in my interview suit. forgot to bring back a souvenir for nick b_.

back now. julie and i smoked all the way back to kenyon and with fritz all through the getting-back reality-check period. today daniel and i sat outside on the farr hall benches and talked about the future and our parallel lives. new york brad put his headphones over my ears in the bookstore and made me listen to some indiepop band. i bought harper's and a bar of lindt chocolate to suppress the urge to buy a six-pack. wrote envelopes for graduation announcements.

now i should go to the library and watch the movie i didn't see yesterday for film class. then write the thank-you notes and write a response paper and read for class tomorrow and oh, maybe unpack? and clean my room? and not punctuate unnecessarily with question marks?

m_: the english department can really be bastard people. do your thing, and get what you want from them.

i just got justin gracer's (machete) demo album (thank you ed). he goes on tour this summer. he's going to wreak havoc on music. it'll be great.