I woke up at 7 AM this morning and had no idea where I was. I had made some changes to my room yesterday, moving a cabinet into my direct vision; before it had previously sat in my peripheral. I had also hung some new window covers, royal blue, which give the room a different cast. It was enough so that when I woke up, groggy, just a touch hungover and jetlagged, that I still thought I was in Europe, in some small and overfurnished hotel room. I lied there and tried to remember what city I was in now, and panicked because I couldn't remember. I felt like I had been traveling for years, that I had become one of those permanent travelers, the ones who keep going and never stop because anything is better than facing reality and settling down. I was tired and old and unsettled. And then, suddenly, it hit me. I was at home.

"Ah, that's all right then," I said to myself. And then I went back to sleep.

I'm off my game, a bit, I must admit. Last night I took the L train to Kerri's house, and I had some trouble. She told me to get off at the third stop in, which is Graham, and as Graham approached, I stood at the door, and then hesitated, as I heard the driver announce that "Grand" was next. I stayed on it, instead, and frantically looked through the directions I had written down in my journal, and realized I had missed my stop. At Grand I got off, and realized there was no crossover, and asked the man in the booth for advice. He told me to to go the next stop for the crossover, or I would have to get out, walk outside, and pay again. I thought I could beat the other train, and I was running late, so I opted to walk outside and enter on the other side.

Of course, I missed the next train by mere seconds, so I sat and waited for ten minutes, reading the summer fiction issue of the New Yorker. I got on the next train, only to realize I had left my journal, which contained not only my directions but my trip notes, on the seat beside me in the station, so I got back off again to grab it, and the train left without me. I then had to wait another ten minutes, and I ended up being about twenty minutes late for dinner.

I shook my head at myself. I have been riding these subways for years, and suddenly I find that I am, quite simply, mildly retarded. I haven't been able to suspend that feeling I had in Europe of not-knowingness, a sensation that I enjoyed at the time. But that feeling is a location-specific one. I had to rely on the kindness of strangers there, I had to make myself vulnerable, in order to fully experience the new. But if you lose your confidence in New York City, you're going to be in big trouble.

At Kerri's house, Peter spilled the yummy homemade vinagrette dressing all over the table. That didn't stop us from enjoying a delicious dinner anyway, but I think I infected him a bit with my little lost lamb energy. And then, after dinner, in the stinking, sticky heat, we sat in the living room, and, as Kerri and I caught up, I wrapped my hand around her curtains. As I got up to move, I tugged on them, and ended up pulling them all down.

I broke her curtains. Are we getting all this? Do not invite me into your home for the next week or so. I will destroy it.

We ended up heading over to a rooftop party on Dobbin Street, where I saw a handful of people I knew, but mostly there were unfamiliar faces, unfamiliar in the sense that I had never met them, but they looked exactly like people I had known before: pretty girls in their early twenties with big, stoned eyes, tan flesh, and strappy tank tops; ugly, sexy boys in their late twenties wearing new wave skinny ties or unruly haircuts; healthy, drunk women who sang out loud during the fireworks, screaming pro-American songs, claiming their power on the rooftop, out in the fresh air, because they cannot do it on the street level.

John from Enon was there, and he told me that he just finished his new album, and would be playing at the big Coney Island rock and roll extravaganza.

"We're going on at noon, though," he said shyly. "So you'll probably miss us. I mean, you have to get up before noon."

"I'll be there." I said, and I will.

It occurred to me that for most people he knows, getting up early in the morning on a Saturday (and by early I mean 10 AM, which is not really that early at all), would simply not be an option. They wouldn't do it. They would miss the show, because they could not fathom seeing a Saturday morning in the bright light of the day.

It occured to me that some people still live like rock stars even though, I, unfortunately do not.

Kerri's crazy brother Tim was there, and we immediately picked up our conversation - about writing about art - where we had last left off about four months ago. He asked me again to write something for the site he works on, ArtKrush, and I told him I didn't know anything about art (although I might be down with writing a manifesto on the importance of public art.) I told him he needed a haircut, because he did, and he said he knew he did, and that he looked like a wet dog.

Kerri brought margarita works, and got busy mixing us all drinks on the rooftop. People called me "Angel" because that's what it said on my t-shirt. There were screams and hollers and hoots when things looked pretty and nice in the sky.

Somewhere in there we all got drunk and saw some fireworks, the tops of which were obscured by the haze of rain clouds moving in from the city.

"I think we're only getting half the fireworks," said Peter, and it was true. "They should have a helicopter fly around and blow away all the smoke and clouds."

"If you ran the Fourth of July," I said, raising a glass, "It would be a much more efficient operation."

Riding the subway last night home from Williamsburg with Kerri's friend Nicki, I experienced another bout of culture shock. I had been riding underground transportation for weeks in Europe, but it had seemed much quieter, perhaps because Europeans are quieter, or perhaps because I couldn't understand what anyone was saying and just tuned them out. Last night, surrounded by all those English speaking voices, it was if someone had turned on the volume on a television set that had previously been set to mute. I could suddenly hear fifty conversations in my head, ringing and clanging for attention. I remembered, again, the schizophrenia of New York City.

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