Here. Listen to this at least for the first riff. It'll set a mood.

After spending a day at Fix Cafe working on this and this and starting to feel a bit like a regular, I headed over to the Metropolitan Pool for a quick workout. I'm back on pace to hit it three times a week, and getting to the point now where I can diversify the routine a bit. In this instance, I added some lower-back stuff and re-arranged my order such that I hit the lats and shoulders before closing out on the chest and arms. Life is all about contrasts. The Met Pool has a nice little gym, and on a friday it's nearly empty, which is both nice because you can work at whatever pace you want, but also a drag... because you can work at whatever pace you want. No overall sense of pushing. I close out with 6.3 miles in 15 minutes on the stationary bike and a very brief cat sequence to keep my back loose, then head back to GPoint for a shower.

I'm still staying with Wes and Jeremy up there in the old hood. They've been absolute champions about letting me sleep in their living room, truly above and beyond. It's easy to fall into staying with them (I have keys and everything), but I need to explore alternatives. No one likes having a bum on their couch for three weeks straight, even if he does occasionally provide some entertainment. He's also loud and makes a mess and stinks up the bathroom; I'm sure it gets tiring. Anyway, the point is I should spread the burden of my existence throughout my social network.

After getting back I scarf a cheeseburger from PFC, bathe and read a book review in Harpers about soem retrospectives on the Enlightenment ("The Enlightement Is Dead; Long Live The Enlightenment!") which got a few gears moving upstairs. Wes is cleaning up the place; parents coming to town this weekend. I take down the recycling and head out to the Lyric, which is just starting to fill up with a birthday party, including a band, and some of our crowd come to say final goodbyes to John and Noreen, who are moving to Boston today. I run into Phantom Phil (again, random), Frank and Laura, Alex and Laura, Capodice and Kate Kita. Everyone's a couple these days. Selah.

The bar is the bar. Our pal Cal -- the #1 toothless vagrant in my life -- shaved off his prodigious hobo-beard, 'cause people were calling him "Saddam Hussein," and his birthday is coming up and all. The band is playing and they're allright in an instrumental prog-moog way. Fortune smiles and I "win" a mini-bottle of Jameson's from Cass by correctly guessing which pocket she was holding it in. It was a "pick which hand" game, which you can often win with child psychology. See, I used to play this game with Bill all the time, and child-me was astounded at how often he would guess which hand was holding. Then he explained that I would unconsciously hold one hand a little more forward and the other a little back. The hand I was holding back was the one that held the prize. This still works with adults if they're not really watching it.

I also "win" two dollars, again from Cass, by being willing to slug down a Stoli Vanilla and Diet Coke she ordered but was then -- rightly -- disgusted by. I grimace and make wild proclamations about how this is the drink that we're going to spread coast-to-coast with Vagabender (a total lie; we're spreading the Hound-Ball and nothing else) and duck out back to nip down the mini-bottle. This on top of my own work with the right honerable John Powers starts to give me itchy feet, so when minister AlX called me up wanting to run around the Burg after being dissapointed by Sideways, I bopped out.

AlX and I ended up meeting down at a place with no sign. It was a fully converted spot; faux underground, but fun; part and parcel with the second wave of Bilzburg gentrification. On the bike ride down I could feel my lower back getting the throb as I projed down Meeker under the BQE, that's good. I'll need to build strength there to handle the move to fix-gear. We were supposed to rendezvous at Royal Oak, but just as I was pulling up he called and asked if I wanted to meet him at the bus stop, maybe poke a little smot before we hit the scene. Being a gentlemen, I accepted, fielding the phone call and making a great circle around the original destination without putting a foot on the ground.

We got high and ducked the law in McCarren park and wandered south, switching from our original destination to the no-sign place. There's a little difficulty with locking the bike, but once that's done we head in. It's humid and loud when we first enter, and we make for the little outdoor roof-deck area. like I said, fully converted spot. We're not there two minutes when a crazy drunk girl starts to "tell me a story," laying on large and unsolicited psychodrama, and we're driven back in on the pretense that I have to piss.

AlX and I talk politics, as we do, and also a little bit about women. He's married, so I respect his opinion there. His philosophy is a challenging blend of libertine free expression and high spiritual standards, which makes his message (on politics and on girls) refreshingly energetic. "You have to decide what you want, and then you have to take it." It's a kind of agressively capitalist message, but it's backed up with an earnest enlightenment spirit and a deep appreciation for community and social responsibility. There's a little nudging for me to play the field, a little vicarious living for the married man. I'm pretty well knackered though, so I'm not about to make any moves, even if there is a pretty hot Indian girl over my right shoulder. We eat a little bar pizza -- another feature of second-wave gentrification -- and enjoy the atmosphere.

The time rolls around and we walk out, and by and by I mount up and return to the Lyric for some good Bar time. A miller light, a glass of soda water with cranberry juice, some drunk talk with Jeremy behind the bar, some people-watching, and then off to sleep on the futon.

I get up and out as soon as I wake up so as not to crowd the place up for Wes and his folks, brush the teeth and head back to Fix for the wireless and the caffeine. It's no Cafe Commons, but it's allright. There are a lot of kids and dogs and the french roast is solid. There's a great (if sometimes annoying) drunk philosophizer who hangs around swilling Bud Light and talking about geodesic domes; lends to the amosthere of general artsy fartsyness -- you hear things like "The lecture said you have to have, like, a dialectic... goal or something." -- which is all more or less up my alley. Plus I like the way they make their toasted bagels.

So this is my life; working away the days and wandering away the nights. I'm still seeking, but a bit listlessly so; really just waiting to get on the road. The other day I ran into a woman I know at the cafe. She was a freshman when I was a senior at ETW, very precocious. I think she's the only woman who's ever actually grabbed my head and kissed me, which didn't end up working out all that well, but I respect the move. Anyway, we're catching up at the cafe because we're both grown up people out of college living our lives and there's a flirtatious vibration and there's this really kind of charged and revealing moment where she asks, portentiously, "so you don't know what you want?" and I reply with a short pause and a heartfelt "I have no idea."

That's where I'm at on a saturday afternoon. Needing someone to love, getting by with a little help from my friends. It's pretty decent.