Thank you no I didn't have any pizza today. I went into one place where they were serving pizza and even considered it but it didn't look all that appetizing and it would have violated my first rule about eating pizza. No pizza in a place where non-Italian foods and all that.

Why is it that the battery on this laptop is dying in spite of the fact that I've not used it in weeks? I'm sure to have charged the battery for far longer than I needed to then. I can't run the power cord now because of course, it's the BLACKOUT OF OH THREE. That's how they were referring to it on WCBS this evening in any event.

So this may all just get cut off all of a sudden. Either because someone has decided to shoot me up here on my fire escape (blackout paranoia taken to an extreme) or because the battery has died. No matter. There's no pizza to speak of really in this entry so this is somewhat apocryphal anyway.

Somebody just went by on a bicycle with day-glow bands on his head (one from the forehead to the back of the neck and another from the back of the head like a chin strap) around his neck and one in his spokes.

A little earlier there was a fire just down the street and across Washington Avenue. I'd just taken a much needed shower after having walked home from Fifty Ninth St (all numbers will likely be as words b/c I can't see the number keys in the dark)(but have somehow managed to find the parentheses) and Fifth Avenue, and was leaning out the window wearing only a bath towel operating on the premise that no one could see me anyway. My upstairs neighbor Bertha was standing out in front of the building trying to figure out what was happening and so I asked her "Bertha, there's a fire?" And she told me that someone had just set a couch on fire on the sidewalk but that the cops were there and they were putting it out. Then I heard some kid standing on the corner say "That nigger is white yo! That nigger is white!" I'm assuming that he was talking about me since I was, as I've said, hanging out my window naked to the waist and I am indeed rather pale, what with our having had rain in the forecast every day for the past seventeen. Although if there'd been no rain and I had been able to make it the beach he would have just been yelling "That nigger is red! That nigger is red!"

Does the kid know what that word meant as few as ten years ago or does he just think of it as the idiomatic equivalent of "dude," "cat," or "fella?" Which way is better?

Perhaps the oddest thing about being out here, on the fire escape of my second story apartment is the way in which from time to time people are lit up by the headlights of passing cars and they're just doing whatever it is that they'd be doing normally. Crossing the street. Walking the dog. Only now they're doing it in near-pitch.

There is light somewhere, the horizon is made up of the shapes of the couple of buildings that rise slightly higher than the rest of the flat roofline with a slightly lighter sky behind them. What could be lighting the sky up? Full moon that hasn't risen yet? It was pretty high up by this time (Ten Fifteen) last night. Is there power over in Jersey? Last I listened to the radio they said that Westchester would be getting power soon, and that was around nine. Has Manhattan got power? I have to laugh at myself when I remember that when I first realized I had to walk home tonight I was hoping that at least the power would be back on in time for me to play my new computer game.

With one more minute of power on the computer I'd like to say for the record I was on the Thirty Seventh floor of my building up on Fifth Avenue and Fifty Ninth Street when the picture on my monitor accordioned and disappeared. Like every one else on my floor I had to walk down and out of the building, and then I walked down to the Manhattan bridge, over the bridge with it's view of all the people walking across the Brooklyn Bridge and up Flatbush until I got to Mooney's Pub on Flatbush just above Park Place. I had a drink and walked the four more blocks home. I lit candles and stripped and got in the shower. I write this to record my last minutes on this planet in case I should be killed in my sleep by thieves and vagrants (another example of BLACKOUT OH THREE paranoia taken to an extreme.)

I only hope my ninety-five year old grandmother in Toronto has managed to make it out onto one of the three balconies attached to her apartment so as to take in some air, and not overheat (I write this having no idea what the temperature is in Toronto at present and clearly going mad here in the darkness).

 

CODA

At least I think this should be a coda. I'm writing this long after the fact, the battery dying not long after I finished that last sentence there about my grandmother. I thought about going to bed and getting a good night's sleep for a change, one of the first nights with real darkness in some time being that that several halogen lamps mounted on the new laundromat across the street wouldn't be on for the first time since it's opening. For whatever reason, I refrained, getting then or already having had my camera with me up on the balcony there so I could take flash photos of people, lit up momentarily in the dark. I took a few of those from my aerie up there on the second floor and then moved eventually down to street level.

I brought my old Argus seventy five mounted on a tripod with me, intending for that to be the camera I would use to take photos. The camera was built some time in the forties or fifties and I bought a detachable flash for it at some point on e-bay. The flash takes bulbs of the sort that have to be popped out after a single use and the light they give off is blindingly bright. The lens can be held open for a prolonged exposure and so I thought that I might be able to capture some interesting shadows of the fire escape against the side of the building (I haven't developed that roll, so I'll have to let you know). I stuck my small digital and brought it along just cos.

I set up and took a few photos of the building from different vantage points. Then there was a man riding down the street tooting on a long horn strapped around his neck and shouting out "candles! candles!" so I snapped his photo with my digital as he rode by.

"Hey, why'd you take my picture?" he shouted from the dark having rode past.

"Because you're beautiful!" was my reply, thinking that that was the end of the conversation. My mistake.

The man returned and was noticeably perturbed. He was also noticeably rather large and pretty broad.

Lord, thinking back on this right now I don't even really feel like getting into it all that much. It was a somewhat disturbing episode as this man was then demanding first that I reimburse him for having taken his photo or give him the roll of film. I tried to explain that it was a digital camera and that there wasn't any film in there but he seemed to think that I thought he was rather stupid, stupid enough to believe such an obvious lie. I tried talking to this man as plainly and honestly as I possibly could but it always seemed to come down to two things: that I thought he was born yesterday and that he didn't know me "from a can of paint" (a wonderful expression forever tarnished by the discomfort caused me by the entire episode).

Now, I have a very cheap digital camera ($30—look at the photos on this site for samples) and I can't just delete the photos from the camera individually. It's an all or nothing deal until I download the photos onto my computer. I assured this man that I didn't mean to offend him and that I would delete the photo once I'd downloaded it, that I'd only taken it because I thought that the shadow that would be created by him on the passing bicycle would be pretty interesting to look at, and that I wasn't with anybody ("I don't know who you're with" he protested aggravatedly—yeah, I'm with a group of space aliens operating under the aegis of the New York Post and the FBI who have caused the blackout so we might have the opportunity to test out our new soul-stealing device which we've cleverly disguised as a cheap digital camera) but he refused to believe me (hence the can of paint comment). His body language (and his refusal to drop it and continue riding his bike and selling candles (this went on for about fifteen-twenty minutes)) was growing increasingly hostile, and it wasn't getting any lighter. The only illumination available to us was the somewhat lit up police station on the next corner, which may have also been the only thing saving my ass at that point. At one point he told me "I'm glad that you caucasians feel so safe in this neighborhood now, but I can remember a time when I couldn't walk through certain neighborhoods in Brooklyn like Sheepshead Bay without getting beat in the head with a bat," which had no apparent relevance to our discussion. "I don't feel so safe," I replied. "The woman two flights up from me got beaten so badly only two blocks from here that her entire left eye was swollen shut." "Yeah?" he said. "Well I guess that everybody has unlucky days."

In the end he said "I'm going to get out of here before I take this someplace I don't want to go," but then he got on his bike, rode about five feet, and seeming as though he had changed his mind got off the bike and just stood there leaning against a car, staring straight ahead at nothing in particular. I thought that maybe it was time I got going (I'd intended to leave once he was gone anyway) and so I picked up my tripod and started to walk towards my building's entrance, just around the corner. I looked back over my shoulder before turning the corner and he was still sitting there.

I was careful not to light any candles when I got into the apartment because I didn't want him to be able to tell which was my apartment and I snuck up to the window and looked out and he wasn't there anymore. At some point I came back here into my office where there are no windows facing out onto the street and wrote the following entry in my journal:

I'll write this now because I feel threatened mostly, I was standing out in front of my building right now taking pictures of the building with the Argus when a man selling candles and tooting on a horn rode by yelling candles. He was going to ride directly in front of me and I took his picture. He said why'd you take my picture? as he rode by. Then he turned around and rode back, was very upset about this, etc.

He was about six foot, black, no facial hair, light skinned, has lived in this area since he was 6, about 210 lbs., a belly, strong build. Completely bald, high forehead large eyes, referred to whites as caucasians, was riding a bike—a ten-speed I think, with handlebars that come out like those on a regular bike, not like those that curve around like a touring bike. He was wearing shorts & a sleeveless wife beater undershirt. He also had a chain around his neck. Not a heavy chain, (not jewelry, more like for locking his bike up) but it was pretty light. He also had a horn around his neck—like a New Year's Even horn, with a handle & it was on a string. He was also wearing around his neck a blinking thing that looked like a pacifier. His face resembled that of the prisoner in The Green Mile, but his head was narrower. I made the mistake of telling him that I lived in this building, and also about Bea on the top floor.

There was a woman sitting in the front seat of her car, the one across the street on the corner & she came out of her car at one point to ask us if we could move cos she had a headache. Also there is someone now across the street from me on Prospect Pl. one flight up, corner window, and s/he may have seen this all take place.

His bike had a kickstand.

& I think at one point he said he was forty four years old. Certainly over forty, that much I'm certain of."

That night I was unable to settle down. I was too concerned about this man trying to come to my apartment and break in (I'm only one flight up and I'd recently broken into my apartment at four in the morning via the fire escape) and throttle me. Blackout 03 Paranoia indeed. But it was hot and I needed to have at least one window open, so I closed the two other windows onto the fire escape except the one in the living room and slept fully dressed on the couch with a 4' long, 1 1/2 diameter wooden pole next to me that I had from making rods for hanging clothes hangers in my closets. When dawn came I woke up and exhaustedly stripped and got into bed and slept into the early afternoon.

Here are all the digital photos that came out from among those I shot that night.