Good morning. I thought I'd get an early jump on the writing today. The morning is the best time to work, either on writing or in the studio on the arts and crafts. I really need to get working on this large painting I started yesterday, but thought I'd start writing just a bit first. I took the subway this morning and I had shorts and flip-flops on, and a T shirt, and no backpack or bag or anything in my hands. Usually I have a backpack or something, but I'm trying my hand at being hands-free, whenever possible. I take the subway through midtown and I see all the slacks and bags and ties and skirts and shoes and I thank god I don't have to wear those clothes anymore and I can wear what I want in my office/studio. I used to wear those clothes. I used to work on 47th and 5th Ave in a big high-rise, so I know the drill and the attire. I kind of miss it a bit though. When Friday came along, it meant something. Now since I work for myself, Friday is just another day. But I also work longer, much longer hour working for myself. Actually, Friday's still have an air about them.....they still mean the week is at an end or is changing, but it's certainly not as noticeable as when I worked 9-5 for someone else in this case a large corporation. Fridays had other facets about them too, in the summer you could wear jeans on Fridays, AND the day would end at 1:30 on Fridays for the months of July and August....course you had to come in at 8:30 instead of 9:00am the rest of the week to make up for the time you were being 'granted' by leaving early on Fridays in the summer. I still can't believe, nor could I get used to the fact that a boss could tell you what to wear and employees would just put up with that. Can you actually get fired for wearing jeans on a Tuesday, if you had a lawyer backing you up if the company fired you for you choice of attire? And the woman had it worse off, they couldn't wear open toed shoes and skirts that were too high. I heard stories of woman asked to go home and change by their superiors if their clothes were not suitable for the office environment. That's one of the may reasons I quit. That and I just couldn't sit at a computer any more. It was physically painful to sit all day. I fantasized about a computer that I could stand at and work, but then everyone else in the office would wonder what the fuck was wrong with that guy that he needs or worse, wants to stand all day?
I do miss that schedule just a bit, that summer schedule where when Friday came around you really felt like you earned the weekend and then you went to the beach or relaxed, or at least didn't' have to put on another pair of drab, flat-front (never pleated!) khakis. Now that I work for myself I just work all the time. Granted I go to the beach or do some things with Jonathan on the weekends when he has his days off, but not always. Sometimes I find myself working on a Sunday or a Saturday night. I remember the black-out New York had a few summers ago (was it three summers ago?) and I was working in the high-rise on 47th and Fifth Ave. The power went out and everyone had to walk down the stairs, in our case it was 24 floors. Once we got to the bottom the streets were overflowing with people because every single one of the high-rises emptied out and all the people that were on all of those floors of all of those buildings in midtown Manhattan, were now all packed onto the sidewalk and the street instead of dispersed on floor after floor above in the buildings. I miss that kind craziness. I remember after Sept 11th there were constant bomb threats. The diamond district was on the block across from us and quite a few times there were bomb threats where we were instructed to stay in the building because the streets were cordoned off and all we could do was peer down 24 floors to the street and watch the wandering, police robot that would roll along the sidewalk and pick up the 'suspicious' paper bag that always ended up being just that, a paper bag - usually with an empty bottle in it. I miss that kind of craziness. When September 11th happened I wasn't working on 5th Ave, I was working on 23rd and Broadway, in the Flatiron building. That building, being historic and beautiful was a constant target for bomb threats (like many buildings in NY) so we would find ourselves leaving our offices and climbing down floor after floor, day after day, to evacuate the building. For some reason, I thought about September 11th a few times this weekend. I remember I was walking down 116th street, around the corner from my apartment, a day or two after the World Trade Center fell, and this door-front that led up to an apartment buildings was covered with flowers and pictures of this woman's daughter that had died, working at Windows on the World, the restaurant on the top floor of the WTCenter. She was sitting there, the mom, crying. People, strangers and neighbors were leaving flowers for her. There were so many scenes like that in the first days and weeks after after Sept 11th, that this woman grieving on her doorstop, on a dirty, busy cross street in Manhattan, was just another person dealing with total loss. Anyway, when I thought of her this weekend as I walked by that doorstep, I cried, just a tiny bit, because I felt so bad for this woman - and remembering those days after Sept 11th are real easy to do, no matter how much time goes by. I don't think of it often, but when I do, I start connecting all the crazy things that happened that day and the days immediatly after. The weird things you saw and put up with, from people putting up posters of relatives that were surely dead, but they put up the posters anyway, in hopes someone would find them, wandering the streets - to hatching crazy plans to take a backpack with Powerbars, water and a change of clothes and swim across the river to get off Manhattan if things got worse and the bridges and tunnels were locked down. I specifically remember Justin and I thinking that if we had to swim off the island, we would do it at the Harlem river because it was the shortest swim. Seems so nutty now, but at the time there was no telling what would happen or what one should do if it got worse.
Enough of that. I'm in my office now and September 11th 2001 is far away....somehow George Bush is still in office, there has been no immigration reform, New Orleans is still a stinking shit hole of crime and the Iraq war is still going on. The studio is nice right now - the AC is near me, and is on, the sun hasn't yet rounded the corner - blasting the room with intense heat. I've covered most of the windows, the sun is what gets you in the summer. That's what heats up a room and turns it into an oven. I guess we have ourselves a heat wave this week. It's hot, it really is, and humid, but I swear, when I was little I remember summers being VERY hot and VERY humid. Probably because we didn't have air conditioning at all. We had fans. I remember my parents had one of those small fans that was actually two, small, metal ones, kind of like exhaust fans you use in a kitchen window. Anyway, they didn't do much and I remember my sister and I crowding around and sleeping on the floor below the fan in the summer to get some relief....we would sometimes get bored and stick pencils in the fan to listen to the metal blades hit it. When it got
really hot, we would put blankets on the porch or out in the yard and sleep outside, which helped a bit, but it was still very uncomfortable. For some reason I remember it being hotter in the early 70's, when the Bronx was burning and Son of Sam was on the loose in New York and the Zodiac killer was on the loose in San Francisco. Maybe as a kid it just seemed worse. 
With Al Gore's global warming, logic would say that it's hotter and more uncomfortable now, but I swear, the summers of years like 1976 and 1977 were hotter.Can and will Hillary Clinton actually win the election in 2008? She's not anti-war and her ambiguous stance on gay marriage is enough to make me find her and personally scold her (which if I weren't so busy an self centered like most people, I would go find her and scold her. She is my Senator after all. I have a duty to tell her my thoughts.) Her general turn to the right is more and more apparent the past few years. And anyone that's married to someone that signed the Defense of Marriage Act, the FEDERAL LAW signed by Bill Clinton in 1996 that "no state need recognize a marriage between persons of the same sex, even if the marriage was concluded or recognized in another state".....has got to be missing the big picture. Look, I'm sure the Clintons, in their private life, like gay people and support gay couples when they are off the political stage, but to be so two-faced and power hungry to publicly deny the rights and to stand with the republican half of this country just to stay 'mainstream' enough to win elections is totally fucked up. And, in my opinion, completely misguided because even though there is a HUGE swath that runs through the middle of this country that hates faggots and lesbians, I really do think, that the majority of the people in this country, as backwards and Christian that it is, would either support gay marriage, or at least swallow the bitter pill and come around eventually. I really do believe that. And for people like Hillary Clinton and everyone else that are sitting on the fence or worse, have no problem displaying their hatred outright, their lives will be full of embarrassment and regret - once they realise that this country actually is 'ready for' and willing to get rid of the discriminatory, violent and hateful attitude towards faggots and lesbians in this country.
So anyway, I'm not saying anything new or interesting here, it's just that I'm finishing my first and only coffee of the morning so I have some energy in my typing fingers.......oh, and having said all that about Hillary Clinton, there's good chance I'll vote for her. Hell, if a woman can get in the White House as the president and not the sidekick wife, I'm all for it. Plus, how fun would it be to see Bill as the first lady? Now THAT'S entertainment! Bill has his offices in Harlem, a few blocks from where I live. I have never seen him on the street but if I do, you can be sure I'll scold him for signing the Defense of Marriage Act (among other things)........and then I'll try to sell him a painting. It would be great to have a painting in his office. I do like him and I do like Hillary, and I want to like them even more, but they make it so hard. Fuckers.
I suppose I better get to work. Got painting to do. Have a good day and stay out of the sun. We got a heat wave here.
