The provisions in my fridge are getting sparser and sparser. The lettuce leaves turned dark and wilted into something almost beyond recognition. The bok choy has dried into hay-like stalks. I'm about to leave on a long trip, so making a proper food shopping excursion doesn't make much sense, and my friends are not helping by inviting me to lunches and dinner. Last time I needed a snack, I fished out a pickle from a jar and wrapped a slice of turkey breast around it. The result was tastier than you would expect. I finished off the pickles and turkey slices, which worked well because there were two of each. Then I started eating the cans that have accumulated in my cupboard. Sardines from Riga, some sort of pâté, then the sour cabbage, and finally chick peas that went into making hummus—the only other things you need are garlic, salt, olive oil and lemon. The lemon I had in the fridge was hard but still had some juice in it. Luckily I made a quick stop at the supermarket to buy an extra one just in case.

After another day of running around, I forgot to eat a proper dinner again, and there was almost nothing left to snack on. My first idea was to eat some olives, but when I opened the container, there was something green on them. Then I thought to make shakshuka. I had an onion, some remnants of canned tomatoes, and most importantly, the eggs. I opened up the tomatoes only to find out that they had molded over. I thought long and hard and realised my only other viable option was to make crepes. Buckwheat crepes, for which, with a little creativity, I had all the ingredients: buckwheat flour, oil, rice milk, and the aforementioned eggs. But when I went to back to the cupboard, I could only locate the buckwheat flour. My white flour had finished. I couldn't make crepes with no white flour. Buckwheat flour doesn't bind properly, and I wasn't about to make that mistake at 11 pm on a Sunday night.

In desperation, I thought, I'm almost as tired as I am hungry. I should just go to sleep. But the hunger won out. I put on a coat and went to the supermarket. It's a simple Gristedes on a block where you wouldn't think to find a Gristedes because it's all restaurants and trendy shops for pre-teens and tourists.

There's something odd about being in Gristedes on a Sunday night at 11 pm. People are doing their shopping, but in slow, hushed tones, as if you're walking in a dream. I even dreamed a little bit myself while looking for the flour, which took a while. Gristedes is like a Minotaur's labyrinth. Take a wrong turn, you could meet a dead end, or a shorts-clad jock so absorbed in whatever's coming out of his ipod that he walks right into you. In this lofty night-dream I asked myself, what should I fill the crepes with? Cheese, of course, was the obvious answer so I went along the dairy isle, looking for some options.

Then something happened to shake me out of my reverie. The cheese options were either shredded yellow cheese, Kraft singles, or those little pressed balls covered in red wax. Where the hell was I? Isn't this New York City? Isn't it the law that all supermarkets in the village must at the very least have a decent cheese selection? I had seen bodegas in Crown Heights with a better choices than this. I touched the different cheeses, not knowing which option was worse than the next. They were all foul. I finally picked the most innocent looking crumbled Gorgonzola and went in search of a tomato to accompany it. After a series of wrong turns I found myself looking right into a case which proudly announced, "World Cheese Selection". Aha! That's where the Bries and the Bleus and the real Irish Cheddars had been hiding! I stashed the crumbled Gorgonzola somewhere, grabbed a block of cheese that looked much much much better, and rushed out.

When I got home, I found out I barely had any rice milk, so I cut the recipe in half and poured in some water, but the crepes came out great, really great, blue cheese, tomatoes and all. Today I was walking down the street with J without really thinking about anything, and we encountered a toaster sitting on the sidewalk. It was in good condition, clean, with not too many crumbs lying around below the coils. It was meant for four pieces of toast.

"I really could use a toaster," I said.

"Why don't you take it?" she said

"It's too big. Let's see what else we find," I replied, and we continued down the street.

A few houses later, there was a dart board. It was not just a dart board by itself, but one that was mounted in a wooden box, with the doors slightly ajar and names of high scoring dart players in columns on both sides.

"I don't really want a dart board," I said.

"I couldn't remember what the name for that thing was," she said.

"Let's keep going and see what else comes to us," I decided, and we walked on.

A few houses later, we saw the a chair with a metal frame and a kind of plastic back and seat. It was the type of chair someone would have in his patio or back yard, weather-proof and perfect for sitting and drinking summer cocktails.

"This is a neat chair, but I don't think it's right for me," I said.

"This chair looks crooked," she said

"It's not really crooked but it certainly looks crooked, and besides, where can I put it, my fire escape? So I can get tickets from the city?" I made my judgement and we kept moving East.

A few houses later, we became completely distracted by the overtly gay mannequins in the windows of the shops. It wasn't just one shop. It was two, three, then four. We were in Chelsea, after all.

After that, I couldn't really wish for anything, except maybe straighter-looking mannequins.
After getting a really bad flu and spending days sequestered in my apartment, I decided that it was time to give away some stuff. I had just broken my immersion blender, and thought that maybe, just maybe, someone could use it for parts, so I put the thing on craigslist free.

That was probably my mistake.

A woman named Sally emails me. She wants it, and can pick up "now". Oh, I think, she must be in my neighbourhood already! I'm about to head to the library, so I call the number she gave me, and get no answer. I write her that she can meet me at the library if she'd like. I go and return and still nothing from Sally who can pick it up "now".

Suddenly, my phone gets a voice mail (although it didn't ring) and it's from Sally. She wants to meet me at the library. I get an email  reiterating the same. No, I write her, I'm already back home, but she's welcome to come by and pick up the thing. I call her and it goes directly to voice mail. At this point, I have spent probably 10 minutes writing emails and calling this woman, and checking her voice mails.

She writes back, I'm on my way! Coming from Brooklyn. What? So she's not in my neighbourhood. Is a broken immersion blender so important to drive all the way from Brooklyn? Also, she mentions that her phone was on mute, which is why she missed my calls. I just know that she is driving, and she will ask me to come downstairs, which I at that moment decide to not do. The suspicious thing in all this is the email she wrote me from: it's ___ebay@aol.com. It's not enough that I have to check the messages she left me, call her back and leave her messages in turn, not to mention all those emails. It's fine if she wants to sell my broken immersion blender on ebay, but I am NOT walking down six flights of stairs in my post-flu weakened state to award it to her.

In a little while, my phone beeps with a voice mail. She is in the neighbourhood and looking for a parking spot. Would I come downstairs? I call her back and tell her that I cannot come downstairs, but she is welcome to stop the car on the curb opposite my building, which is what I generally do when I need to run up. "I don't want to get a ticket," she whines. I am not budging, and tell her my apartment number. She sulks off to find parking. Our phone calls make me think that she's the kind of woman who wants to have conversations with strangers, something I just don't have time for today.

The bell rings, I buzz her in, and a while later I hear footsteps. I open the door and it's a woman in her late 40s, overweight, and with a CANE. Now I feel a little bad for not coming downstairs. She makes a comment about being way up on the 6th floor and I can see that if I don't immediately give her the bag, we were going to have a conversation after all, so I thrust the bag into her hands, say, "okay, enjoy!" and close the door.

I don't know anything else about the broken immersion blender, the cane, or the ebay sale. I was certain she was going to call me later on and complain that the blender doesn't work, but she didn't. A friend told me, "I hope she doesn't use it to do anything illegal", to which I responded, "no, she has a CANE for that!" I sleep in the movie theatre. It's not intentional, it must be the light or something, or uncertainty about my new career, but no matter what I wake up at 8.30. Last night I got to bed at around 4.30, and sure enough at 8.30 I was awake.

There's a documentary film festival going on, so some movies are good for sleeping. The chairs are comfortable enough, I take off my shoes and snuggle into the seat.

The other day I was with my friend and I had a déjà vu. It was kind of a long one, almost a full minute, and I decided to not say what I was supposed to say, as scripted by the déjà vu. Afterwards we talked about it and I told him that I changed the future.

The next day I was in the movie theatre, getting ready for another session of documentaries and wondering which ones I would sleep through. A guy sat next to me, and some time later, after I took off my headphones, he asked me, do you frequent documentary films? Yes, I try, I replied. He said, maybe you'd be interested to check out my film. It's about déjà vus. You know, that phenomenon when you feel like you are seeing something again, even though it is actually your first time in that situation?

Yes, I said, I know it very well. I have them frequently. I just had a déjà vu yesterday!

I couldn't find the right words in Portuguese to tell him I had also changed the future. I'm ear-high in milk thistle tea and kale. Delicious.

One of the things the websites say to do is "eat less" and I get the point but if I eat less, I might lose more weight. My mother, however, has commanded me not to lose more weight. I think I have to eat whole avocados at intervals throughout the day.

One day some time ago I went to an accupuncturist M_____'s mother's sister-in-law recommended. It was in one of those buildings in Chinatown that you can't see the enterance to, because there are competing grocery stands out front. Inside, beyond the doorman in the lobby, it is a maze of Chinese optometrists, Chinese tax attorneys, and yes, Chinese accupuncturists.

I waited a long time to see the doctor and then he stuck syringe-size needles into my delicate skin. The needles were attached to machines that slightly rotated them, presumably so I'd get the most benefit. The whole time I thought of World War II and mistreatment of prisoners.

I went back to have this "treatment" a few more times, but I brought headphones to make the torture more bearable. Every time I came to see the doctor, I waited between one and two hours. Those hours were spent in a room of people sitting very still in tall chairs with upright backs, staring at a huge TV screen which played voilent movies. After that, I almost welcomed the needles.

The third or fourth time, I asked the girls at the front desk, "what is the earliest I can make an appointment? I can't spend hours waiting."
-- "The first appointment is 11.30."
-- "Great, I'd like to make an appointment for 11.30. Will I see the doctor at 11.30?" (I just asked to make sure because I'm dealing with people who play violent movies at the accupuncturist's)
-- "The doctor comes at 1pm."
-- "So can I make an appointment at 1pm?"
-- "Yes but the people who have been waiting since 11.30 get to see the doctor first."

The last time I went to see the accupuncturist in the office building on Mott Street behind the two grocery stores, I arrived at around 12.30. I didn't see the accupuncturist until about 3.45. I missed lunch and a meeting, texted everyone I knew, swore in different languages, yelled at the staff, and finally called my mother. Even mothers know their limits sometimes. She didn't tell me not to lose any more weight. I got a new phone so I am erasing all those messages I like to have with me in case I end up bored on the subway.

-> J: You may be happy to know that the bus was hell on earth this afternoon. In fact, i'm still on it! Thank god i slept through a lot of it. Enjoy the weekend!

-> M: AAARGHHH!!! I just shot a whole roll and there was nothing in the camera.

-> D: Guggenheim is better when you're drunk! We just saw this room with inflated pig stomachs or something!

<- D: Yes, let's capitalize on the obvious and open a museum with a bar.

-> S: I'm hanging out at my house listening to moroccan music with my sister.

-> D: This date... This is hell on earth. Don't call me till later though...

<- P: casa tu compaña un beso

<- M: Go because life is too short not to enjoy

<- M: I got a kids huffy from kmart haha

-> R: There was almost just a fight in trader joe's. Two people were banging carts, and in typical ny fasion, a random guy pulled out his PD badge & broke it up!

And some overheard stuff:

"I'm a product of Brooklyn"

"I made spam sandwiches cut into circles & they were elegant." I am going through my records and generally organizing my life. I'm finding all sorts of emails that I never replied to, but genuinely wanted to. Now it has been years. Am I allowed to delete them? Or will they continue to sit in my inbox? They are markings of my shame.

I want to be released from this one-sided covenant.

(I just erased one. It's a start)

Necessity.
Idiocy and other virtues.

ennui without order

• bike snob NYC
• ultraclay
• a tam in australia
• new york hack
• mikebot
• eurotrash
• this fish needs a bicycle
• on the face
• spicy children
• myasorubka
• massive red-eye
• jewschool
• malapoesia
• patently silly
• waiter rant

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