08/09/25

   When I’m not tired but know I should sleep I put on an eye mask and count down from 1000. I used to count down from 100 but that was too quick, I would still be awake by the time I got to zero. Most days I can lie down, rest my head on the pillow, and fall straight to sleep but lately I haven’t been tired. So I count. On a good night I won’t get past 900, on a bad night I can get down to 600. I never envision sheep jumping over a fence instead I see the numbers falling away as if they’re being torn from a wall hanging calendar or turning over like how the number of gallons on the meter of a gas station pump would turn over. When I wake up I don't remember where I left off.

   Nine hundred ninety nine…nine hundred ninety eight…nine hundred ninety seven…

7:05 am

   I walked from our apartment and stopped at the coffee truck that’s usually stationed outside the train and next to the bus stop from seven to eleven every morning. I’m friendly with the man who sits inside the tiny stainless steel box. We greet each other with a wave and a good morning when I’m heading down to the subway on my way to work. I sometimes wonder about him. What neighborhood he lives in, where he goes once the afternoon comes around. Does he go somewhere else in the city, somewhere that prefers an afternoon coffee? Or is that the end of his day? If so, I think I’ll change professions.

   I drank my coffee on a bench just inside the entrance of Central Park near 86th street. I walked to the oblong shaped field I laid in many times last summer but not once this summer. The grass is nice here. Deep green and soft with patches of clovers and a decent ratio of canopy cover to open sky. Good for sunbathing. From my vantage point I could look out onto the people freeing their dogs from their leashes, letting them run full speed into the open. Cyclists rising over the crest that grew gradually as you went from 96th to 90th paralleled the swift speed of the dogs as they flew down and around the bend and out of view. It’s a peaceful part of the park. I could hear the call of birds clearly.

   Back at the apartment I splayed out onto the couch and drifted in and out of consciousness while episodes of Law & Order played one after another on the TV. I haven’t spent much time in my apartment as of late. Only now was I noticing the state in which it had been left. Stacks of books were scattered about the room: on the side tables and on the windowsill without the AC and hidden beneath the coffee table. I could even see one lodged in the crack of the orange lounge chair in the corner. All reminders that I hadn't picked up a book in a while. The bookshelf itself was bursting with books stuffed in every crevice. The bowl piled high with matchbooks was spilling over onto the floor. The bed wasn't made, my closet was a mess and I had left my Metamucil to congeal in a glass on the kitchen counter. The apartment windows had become so clouded with grime, the brilliant morning I had just been enjoying seemed like a dream.

   I felt tense and anxious. I could feel a numbness in my face, a crook in my neck. I had no desire to do anything. I felt a heaviness weighing me down.

   I managed enough momentum to dress and meet up with M who invited me for a drink at Commerce, around 7. M ordered a glass of wine; white because she’s allergic to red, and I ordered my usual vodka soda with two limes. The specials board had listed the seasonal corn cakes we enjoyed together last summer so we put in an order to soak up the alcohol. She asked about what I had been up to today. I told her about my coffee vendor friend and the cyclists in the park and that I had spotted a large red beetle walking across the ground as I sipped my coffee on the park bench this morning. But that was at seven in the morning wasn’t it? It’s seven in the evening now. Yes, well, I laid on my couch for a bit.

   After another round our conversation gained some maturity. Complaints about work and coworkers and relationships and maintaining relationships and having no time for yourself and feeling selfish. About the crook in my neck and about M’s one zit and about my credit card bill and about M’s roommate losing her job. You can’t ever trust a clickbait company I said. Maybe you should get a new couch she said. Our bartender friend served another round without our direction pouring M a third glass of wine, this time all the way to the top, and mixing my fourth vodka soda, this time with less soda. Your conversation was really intense, I didn’t want to interrupt is what he said.

   I got a text from N who lives around the corner from the bar inviting us to her rooftop. She said invite Chef I haven’t seen him in so long. I had been to her roof before. It has a near 360 degree view of lower Manhattan and is the perfect place to see the sunset. I called Chef and told him to meet us at Commerce in 10 minutes.

   We stumbled out of the bar and Chef was waiting on the corner holding a bottle of rosé and wearing a button up sightly damp with sweat. I couldn't recall ever seeing him in a dress shirt. We walked the three blocks to N’s apartment, greeted the doorman, and took the elevator to the penthouse. Walking the length of the building on a path lined with penthouse apartment doors, of which the building had many, we get to N who was with a large group of friends in the exact spot she had thrown the party the first time I had been to her building.

   I took to the table containing wine and pizza and poured drinks for M and Chef before posting up against the concrete railing of the building. The Hudson River was sparking as the sun hung in a golden blaze above New Jersey. I heard the chatter of the group behind me but honed in on M laughing and joking in the way she does with a random girl from the party. I jumped into their conversation pointing out the red and blue reflected lights of a large grouping of unseen rescue vehicles on the all-glass building adjacent to us. We joked together about how there were pride flags on one of the two identical piers in view below but not on the other. One is for gay workouts only. I announced in jest that I was going to jump off the building. M and her new friend M pointed out the ledge that I’d probably land on.

8:25 pm

   M, Chef and I sat in silence, at least a silence held between ourselves, as we watched the red-hot ball of sun falling. I imagined this moment as the end of Das Lied von der Erde. Beyond the proscenium, someone slowly lowered the sun behind a painted backdrop of the city with a rope while the alto sang Der Abschied. Each time I looked up the sun had fallen further and further, changing shape from the buildings in the foreground before finally slipping out of view leaving only the color of a sunset within the sky and the clouds.

   N and the group we hadn’t interacted with contemplated the sunset within their childhood memories. Someone said they had never seen the sun that way. Earlier I overheard someone else saying to another that their vibe is the best they ever felt from anyone. The earth will stay beautiful forever, but man cannot live for even a hundred years is what Mahler said, I think.

   I looked onto the Empire State Building as the twinkling lights of its spire flashed on. It seemed as though a pitch black darkness took over the roof the moment the sun had parted from the sky. It was either that or my intoxication had reached another level.

   On our way out we overheard that one of N’s guest had been giving tarot readings. I volunteered myself having never had any psychic analysis and sat on a little stool in front of the woman while M and the party-goers still in attendance gathered ‘round. I shuffled the cards the way I would a deck of playing cards. She directed me to split the deck and pull three that she then flipped and revealed to everyone. She gasped. I leaned in. 

   The reading was as follows: The first card spoke to a beautiful, bountiful emotional energy coming from me. The card itself had a cup akin to the Holy Grail overflowing with liquid. She said that my energy was overflowing. She began to get emotional. 

   The second card hinted at hardships I was facing with an illustration of a knight with ten swords in his back. It said I was at my lowest and under immense pressure and that it was undeserved and it hurt the reader physically to see that I was suffering. According to M the reader began to cry. I was too focused on squinting in the darkness to see it. 

   The third card told of my great potential and that I would make it through my suffering and be better for it. A card that sat face up on the top of the deck foretold of someone in the physical realm that would comfort me and help me through my trials. They would guide me to salvation, to a nurturing opportunity that is solid and material in my life.

10:21 pm

   I rode a Citibike into the night and through the park. The calling songs of crickets and the high pitched staccato of katydids droned on in long unbroken sequences. The streetlights had yet to illuminate West Drive. There was only the light of my bike and a full moon peaking through the branches. Suddenly the heaviness that had weighed me down earlier in the day had disappeared. Was my fortune fulfilled? I felt the breeze come over my body that accumulated sweat from the ride up. I could see the moon. I could see fireflies. I felt beautiful and I felt good. The earth breathed deeply, filled with peace and sleep.

Playlist

Das Lied von der Erde (Otto Klemperer's recording) - Gustav Mahler

This Song - Grizzly Bear

Étude in C-Sharp Minor Op.42 No.5 Affannato (Horowitz performance) - Alexander Scriabin

Scientist Studies - Death Cab for Cutie

Piano Concerto No.1 in E Minor Op. 11 (Martha Argerich performance) - Frédéric Chopin