Shrove Tuesday

After waffles with Coco it was lunch with Jake. In between I had made some calls and been to the New York Public Library and ordered some old newspapers under the well-painted domed ceilings and marbled hallways. But now it was three and time for eating.

The spring’s been coming, or well trying to come. Yesterday it was as blue as a darling’s eyes but today winter is having its last sweaty puff. It’s a shame really, the winter was crackly shiny bitter: a terrible monstrous thing that kept me indoors and fearful of not wearing enough trouser. So today’s huffy effort at wet dribbly snow was a little pathetic. The winter should have quit. It should have been bigger. There’ll be winter time again.

We crossed Broadway at the second attempt and went to Amir’s. They do Lebanese food there and you get falafel in collapsing pitas which damp out and sag with bitter yoghurt. There’s always salad which flops onto the paper plates as well. It’s a slippery slappery meal that ends up on your cheeks and among your teeth. It’s a team effort. Jake saw I had a scrap in my teeth and he told me so. I think it has to be that way. You need to trust your fellow luncher.

I trust Jake. He’s Jacob really. The surname’s Goldstein. You’ll find him on the sixth floor normally, if you’re looking. If you’re not, he tends to crop up anyway. He’s younger than he thinks but he has spent some years in the mountains, in Montana, of all places. He must be nearly six feet tall with the sort of functional black hair you might expect. He wears glasses and in that hot snow they were flicked and spatted with dots of water. To cut a story short: Jake has a gab for things. He gives high fives but he talks back.

Jake was joyed because he had nailed a pair of work opportunities – plucked some life out of the cloud that is conjoining above the school these days. Everyone needs the cloud, everyone commiserates with each other in fear and disdain of the cloud but, really, honestly, we’re all looking for a little ladder up into it – and, what’s more, a private ladder that no one else has seen, to skip up alone and unencumbered, to not look down, to disappear away into the thing we want to be in but are afraid of because we are not. Jake paid for Amir’s because he’s found a pair of ladders. I hope they go high enough. Here's his site.

Will Carr left yesterday and returned to the hills. Maybe he’s back now. He came and saw and had to sleep in the very narrow bumply side of my futon. I kneed him a couple of times in the night but I didn’t mean to. I hope he didn’t notice. Will saw it all, the whole NY sham-dram. If you want more, look him up in his district. We saw puppets and bars and subway trains. Will diligently did museums and the glowing lights of midtown. By the end of the week he was giving directions to lost Americans like the millions of wise-punks that live in this town. Maybe it’s contagious. I hope so.