February Dining.

Collected Agenda #31

WHAT I DID

Monday, February 3

I think I will spend some nights alone in the apartment, actually, this week. I think I will give myself some peace, then. Yes, this is good, this is what you should do. And I will call David who will be in Paris, and I will see my friends and I will go to school, I will walk across the Williamsburg Bridge by myself in the mornings, I will run sometimes, and write sometimes, and I will be all alone but I will have my friends to see, David to call, and on the weekend there will be my family, and it will all reset me in a way that is pure and nice and I am craving. Ok, tomorrow, then.

So, today, then, you begin the morning with the collecting of the self. You have been doing everything one should do, yes - water, lemon, ginger, avocado, salmon, the apartment is messy but not too bad, you are mostly on time, liquor sometimes in excess but you are not a child anymore, not mostly, mostly it's ok. You stay up late, but this is not too bad. You have never spent the night in a house alone before, never, not even once, in a hotel a few times but never in a place that you must enter, unlock, remember to lock again behind you.

I'm terrified of many things, really. You might not know this meeting me but then, I give away a lot. I said I had no object permanence. I said this for a while, but I stopped meaning it around April. I stopped saying it around then, too. I have so much object permanence these days. You know this, because you notice how one detail is not as you remember it, and suddenly all you want is for everything, everything, everything to be restored.

There was a wonderful dinner last night. The best in a while, really. We returned to The Knickerbocker, and you wonder, then, why you ever go anywhere else - the quiet dark wood dining room, not quite cavernous but certainly not small, the liquor on the grand piano, that huge t-bone steak, enough to serve a family, creamed spinach, french fries with the sauce from the meat au poivre, jazz on Sundays, tea, coffee, no martinis tonight but those are excellent too. Why did we ever go out for small plates? It is so much more special here. Raining, outside. The rain turns to snow. Yellow cab home. It feels nice, yes, to leave things on terms like these.

Tuesday, February 4

Silver light in the morning. Ruby say’s - “it’s spring outside,” and I haven’t been