Damnit.

At least its good bicycle weather.

Imminent death of the MTA predicted. Film at 11.

Fran Lebowitz

Kay's expert camera work:



A completely separate excerpt from a 1993 Paris Review interview:

INTERVIEWER:
Young people are often a target for you.

LEBOWITZ:
I wouldn't say that I dislike the young. I'm simply not a fan of naïveté. I mean, unless you have an erotic interest in them, what other interest could you have? What are they going to possibly say that's of interest? People ask me, Aren't you interested in what they're thinking? What could they be thinking? This is not a middle-aged curmudgeonly attitude; I didn't like people that age even when I was that age.

Watching

I've been in a bit of a mood lately. Money's been tight, and with that the eternal existential questions... am I doing something that makes me happy? What makes me happy anyway? And Kay handles these sorts of things differently than I do, and so we had a bit of a tiff, so last night I just decided to hop on the Raleigh and see what happened. I wandered around Brooklyn for the greater part of four hours, discovering my favorite part of all cities: the background. I wandered up and down the waterline, watched the tugs move barges by night off of Red Hook; found where the Chinatown buses sleep; found old sailor bars and new construction. I watched cop cars race down the FDR from a vantage point on the promenade, and the cars looked like rubies around the neck of Manhattan. The Raleigh struggled over the cobblestones of Dumbo and I listened to the power plant crackle on a silent street. I climbed into vinegar hill and found myself looking at the stark Commandant's house of the Navy Yard. Worked my way around the yard and up Kent into Williamsburg, trading bridge for bridge.
I don't simply watch, anymore.
When I had the money and reason to take the Volvo southward on a regular basis, to North Carolina or Louisiana, or up to Connecticut, that was time when there was nothing to do but watch. Watch the scenery, watch the tach, watch the gas gauge, pull over to rest the eyes.
Its true that the subways are where I get the best writing and reading done. But there's nothing to watch. I think my brain has been too concerned with problems and solutions, lately, ignoring the world in which those both exist and the adventures it can inspire.
I think its time to undo some of that.

Kay's been sick for the past few days, so I've been taking care of her. So yesterday, when she decided to sleep in for most of the day, I came home and decided to just wipe the slate of my day clean, to just sit home and relax, read a little bit, play around with spare parts, write a little bit.
In putting away a few bicycle parts, I just aimlessly started playing with spokes and hubs until I realized that I had the right parts to make a wheel. So on a whim I laced up a quick front wheel, 18 spokes, radial, with the spokes in pairs... Its not terribly durable, I'd imagine, but a test-flight revealed it to be very quick and pretty stable. Which is awesome, considering its constructed entirely out of parts I found in the garbage or salvaged off of broken wheels. Also, there are now only 42 spokes on my racing bicycle, not one more than is needed. Its nice to know every spoke is where it is on purpose.
After that I settled in to do some Armchair/Shotgun business... Submissions have started coming in, and the reading process is proving to be worth the stress of setting this thing up. Between that and the fact that a friend of mine who is a phenomenal writer paid me a compliment on some of my work, I'm beginning to relax a little, creatively, which is nice for idea-flow.
God bless lazy Saturdays.

Kay: Did you know that the New York Times has launched 2 local online sections? One is on Fort Greene. It launched yesterday.



me: Ouch. Welcome to the right side of the tracks.