I woke up early in a bad mood because I’d had bad dreams. Well, not bad dreams, necessarily. More like annoying dreams. Like: Is this what my subconscious is chewing on? Really? I thought I was over this by now. I actually gave myself five minutes to write down all of my complaints about my life and the universe this morning, but only after I made the agreement with myself that I was not allowed to think about any of it for the rest of the day, and, for the most part, that has worked, although it is only 9:50 AM, and that’s a lot of day left to go.
Then I walked over to Schaefer’s Landing, the “luxury” condos across the street. (I used quotation marks because I’ve heard tell that the building materials are shoddy and the apartments are not aging well, and also their retail space on the ground floor has remained empty for a few years now, so how nice could it be if nobody wants to sell their overpriced wares there? Also I kind of hate that building because it cuts a clean line in the middle of the view from the roof of my building. I know, I know, boo-hoo. But still I hate it anyway.) I haven’t been over there since I’ve been back in my apartment, and I was curious to see what their flower/plant/foliage situation was for picture-taking purposes.
I was not impressed! But I did the best with it I could, and I was surprised to find one group of bushes that looked fairly bland was actually really awesome close-up. I was leaning in close with my camera when I heard a voice behind me.
“What are you taking a picture of?”
I turned and it was one of the water taxi workers. Schaefer’s Landing is one of the stops on the water taxi route. Rich folks who live in the building and work on Wall Street take the taxi to work. (While I am almost certain it makes them feel more special than they deserve to feel, it does look like a fun way to commute. I can’t hate on that.) I guess he was on some sort of break.
“This plant,” I said. I walked over to him and showed him the picture.
“Nice,” he said.
“That bush doesn’t look like it should be pretty but it is,” I said. It had made me a little giddy.
“You live in this building?” he said.
“No, I live across the street,” I said.
“It sure is a fancy building,” he said.
“It’s fancy I guess,” I said. I got all underminer-y on the building. “Sure, it’s fancy. Fancy enough.” I resisted sharing the rumors about the crappy construction because I was pretty sure he didn’t give a shit. “You’d think they would have more flowers though!”
“I know, right?” he said.
And then we both declared ourselves geniuses and wondered why it was that we did not rule the world together because if we did there would be MORE and BETTER flowers and then we skipped off across the East River holding hands, as we were suddenly endowed with Jesus-like walking-on-water powers.
Seriously it’s been a super busy morning.
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Tonight I am reading at 7 PM at the Birch Cafe in the Gerswhin Hotel with Anna David. There will be cheap massages and acupuncture sessions available! See you there!
