you know you got them. strange, bizarre, thrilling thoughts and stories. let them spill here.

look, don't feel any pressure. even small things are odd. kernels of oddness waiting to awaken.

here's a story:

i moved to a new apartment in NYC last month. i had already signed the lease for a different place, i'd fallen in love with because of it's five large windows looking out on sky and trees, they were like large shining eyes in a sky room. but after i signed the lease, i stopped by the empty apartment. i lay down on the carpeted floor of the bedroom, listening. there was drumming going on outside, about 35 people drumming in the park and the sound reverberated through my window eyes like terrible heartbeats. my treasured windows became points of vulnerable exposure to the world.

i realized that no place is truly private if there's noise. it becomes a public domain. you can't read a book, you can't choose your own activity. you're just at the mercy of the public.

so i called up the owner and begged for the first place, the one that was quiet but faced an institutional looking public school yard. i ended up getting that place. i became obsessed with silence/quiet. i put my old simon and garfunkel album to the front of my records - "the sounds of silence."

it was quiet. i heard only birds in the morning. except for a few things. a neighbor blowing his nose in the vent through the bathroom in the mornings... the sounds of children in the school yard... and the refridgerator. the intolerably noisy refridgerator. when the compressor is on, it's terrible, like an external migraine.

this weekend, it will finally go away, if all goes well. i will get a new refridgerator.

one thing that is hard for me to get used to - i have nothing blinking or beeping to receive me when i come home each day. i have no TV and no landline phone/answering machine. it's like i'm back to the past. i want people to come by for visits with "calling cards." better yet, i want "gentlemen callers." i want to live in the old days with horse-drawn carriages.