Journal : OpenRoadWorks

Of all the days that I try to get my tasks completed, I feel that most last longer than I expect them to last. Of all of the items to finish on my list, I feel that most take more time than I could imagine, and yet I make the mistake of unrealistically planning my tasks over and over and over again - the myth that I can complete them all within the normal day. So, some items carry over into the next day, to swamp that day and run it into the following day and the one after that. And so the story goes through the week and into the month, until several stragglers crowd the space and blow up the list. Perhaps there is nothing that I can do to make this problem go away. Perhaps there is something that I can stop doing to make days end when they should. Perhaps there is everything to gain by getting my item list under reasonable control. But that seems crazy to think and impetuous to believe that each day will take as each day will bear. So there are nights that fade into neon light...

I wanted to say so many things on a Friday evening leaving work - perhaps something about people's intentions, or something about losing someone, or reflection on how the Buddhists laugh with strong bellies, or various things I wanted to ask passers-by on the sidewalk. But the day is done, the week is retiring, and the dusk raises city lights and lowers thought into the waves of city skyline sparkling. I have nothing left to say.

Under present influence of Nick Drake and late night flourishes in the office, I am spurred to the keyboard, dusting off some thoughts to keep current. So many days have passed since I have visited myself here, even though the thoughts are always swirling. From one day to the next, in this atmospheric mood always changing, who knows what happens from here. Does clarity come after thinking for so long that it comes around the bend? Who knows? The Riverman perhaps, as Nick Drake would sing. The present influence reminds me of any series of modern troubadours that somehow carry the banner in a modern world of the rambling musical storyteller - Bob Dylan, on to Robbie Robertson and Paul Weller and the same Nick Drake, many others in between that slip my mind in the moment. It is part of the tradition that wandering unleashes us into ourselves, as we let those slippery moments become the experience, like comfort, like rain. It just happens so, naturally. Back to me. Of thoughts of love ...

New York can never be just quiet. Eighth Avenue, rush around Times Square, there is only pause very early Sunday morning. In reverence, appear only the stop lights, rhythmic red-green alternating turns at careful stewardship to not wake the hyper signs. Only briefly, and the whir returns like a toddler aroused from nap. New York is unique like this - always making noise, as if its stature and grace falls with the dearth of volume. London can be genteel and polite in the bustle; Paris naps on the starry eyes of lovers who claim the banks of the Seine in sparkling moonshine. Yet New York thunders with trucks, honks with taxis, yells with street vendors, pounds with heavy machinery, drones with large cooling systems on buildings, mostly at the same time, at all times. New York never rests because so many have so much to do - banking, writing, jogging, gambling, filing, acting, mumbling, walking, gazing, chasing, rushing, touching, discovering, losing, becoming, being, encompassing,...

9:55pm at night, Central Park is still, languid even from the deflated heat of a summer day gone to darkness. I will remember always these solitary runs as moments of urban tranquility, almost alone in a city of millions with nothing but nature and trees to surround me. Up the hill towards 72nd Street east exit is always a line of horse carriages that tread an easy loop back around to the Plaza Hotel at 59th Street; the horses are reminder that the city is much cleaner and better scented (arguable?) than past century's New York, but I'm quite certain that the spirit of the city is the same. This night on my run, Bebel Gilberto's silken Portuguese soothed through my headphones. The mood was smoky, and I could only close my eyes in succumbing to the feathery sense of V******'s lips to mine. I must admit distraction tonight among the trees - and not because Mars is closest to us this night as in 60,000 years (on the southeast horizon, an event I will miss while asleep...

Sometimes I feel like I have nothing to write. Nothing, thought spent on fatigue, work, distractions, and maybe random thoughts not worth quoting. The urgency to write is not there, clarity lost amidst the shuffle of the "daily grind." We are all slaves to something. So tonight, I am forcing urgency. I have allowed myself 5 stops on the R train uptown (before my stop) to capture thoughts of the day. And this is my only thought - at least for writing. There are thoughts of sleepiness, V***** and her sweet lips, work that overhangs constantly and underwhelms my senses, and this lifeless response to the GMAT. I guess these thoughts bundle into something - throw in also, by the way, Jen's wedding in SF (invited by S**** at the end of the month) and E****'s birthday tomorrow night down in Chinatown - but I'm not finding it. Besides, my last thought is my last stop and a Central Park run. Sitting on an uptown train, 25 Aug '03

What a charged moment. Writing in the dark, high above Times Square, I only see the silhouettes of a light charade that is usually the HSBC sign, Nasdaq swirling ticker, and the US Army Recruiting Center. Now, it is all black, at the mercy of the sun which skirted off to the west to leave this proud city in an anticipated state of lascivious fun. I can only see bandit cars throwing light shadows from their headlights gliding slowly down Broadway into the shouting maelstrom. It seems that there are several police cars patrolling the same streets - they flash by every fourth car - but it is the uncertainty of a New York night without artificial lights that scares (perhaps excites?) me most. Because above all else, New York is a city manufactured with the lights of a million dreams of human ambition writ large as the usually-sparkling Times Square promenades. But once the lights black out, there is raw human energy left, a different sort of human desire that finds its expression in ...