1 Nov 06

Time:

?

Money:

$26, pet food and the gold vintage-y t-shirt I've wanted for awhile, gym store.
$18, cider and an excellent burger, Cedar.

More interesting things:

Peered into an express train that was not moving so expressly, since the local I was on actually picked up speed faster. It's an interesting idea, because you can see the people and the advertisements and the maps and all nearly as well as you can on your own train, but the objects of your staring are even more removed from you than are the ones in your car. This creates a perspective that seems to lend itself more to a story-like interpretation than does the one you might have on your fellow passengers, and then the tracks diverge and you're back to looking around only your immediate environment.

Noticed that in addition to the usual mosaic - and painted black-and-white - station signs featuring numerals, the 28th Street station also has at least one big mosaic sign indicating "Twenty-Eighth Street." Now why would they expend all those extra tiles? It's not easier to read that way, I don't think, so maybe it's just an unusual indicator of old-school street-name formality, but it's kind of funny in any case.

Felt extremely confused as I made my way down University Place under a sky and a sun that made it seem like nine in the morning rather than two in the afternoon. It was that bright, almost unbearably shiny quality of light that usually hits Florida about 8am on the first Saturday in November, and is replicated to a certain degree in autumn afternoons, but only in the intensity of the blue of the sky; I've never seen that kind of glow so late in the day before.

Enjoyed a lovely - and welcoming - welcome shindig for us English education people. I liked getting to talk with the more advanced students, and I especially appreciated the weird sense of contained history, like it was a family picnic with a bunch of generations all together.