Cafe Notebook

Wir kommen für die Götter zu spät und zu

früh fürs Sein. Das Gedicht des Seins, erst

begonnen, ist der Mensch.

My head hurts and I woke up feeling dehydrated because the heat was turned up too high in my apartment. I was out late last night, walking around Central Park and then, Riverside Park, with a date. It was drizzling most of the time, but not particularly cold, and we eventually found a bar to sit and dry out. I feel as if I used up all my vitality last night, like I’d poured into all out into the Creation Of A Meaningful Experience. Lately, I’ve been consumed by the idea that the city is a prison — it has many of the same features as a prison: violence, labor, limited parameters. Central Park is not the common way, it is not a field or a forest — it is brightly lit at night, and a ring of city light surrounds it at almost every point. Similarly, it is almost impossible to find a cafe that isn’t playing top 40 radio. Exposure to light and sound, not incidentally, are part of modern methods of torture, used to break down prisoners psychologically. I’m exhausted, I speculate, because I’m expending an unnatural amount of energy carving freedom out of over-stimulation, joy out of repetition. Even now, while I’m writing this, I have to listen to the same Christmas soundtrack that I’ve heard at practically every public establishment in the city for the past month. It’s like, as a civilization, we find it incomprehensible that human beings could sit without bathing in artificial atmosphere.