Andrew J. Lederer

fringe office took the 1100 bucks i offered and will tell me how much more i owe and when i owe it on monday. it strains credulity to think that, after taking all that money, they'll drop my listings because of what i still owe (especially since i won't owe it if they drop my listings). but who knows with these guys?

i'm pretty much recovered from my self-induced stomach ailment. yesterday, i managed to get outside a little.

i had waves of discomfort but could handle them and, more tellingly, i could handle the sikh day celebration i stumbled onto in and around madison square park.

a right festival of turbans, it was. i went looking for native foodstuffs to buy, but it turned out they were giving them away. (it's times like these that i love religion.)

it was good, indian vegetarian food -- some of it familiar-looking, some of it looking like slop. but i ate everything that was handed to me and even the slop was tolerable. (some of the other stuff was nice.)

pure, white, delicious indian rice. perfect tortilla-like breads.

mmm mm.

it made me feel like hell.

a hell i transcended by getting in touch with the pink, white, and translucent green beauty of madison square park. (also its metallic beauty, as mixed in with nature's aesthetic bounty were metal trees, which were part of some art installation.)

the springtime wonders swept me to that pleasurable place inside me where the fact of my existence in a wondrous world generated intense pleasure and a sense of connection to nature.

in addition to which, i still felt like hell.

which made me notice i was right near the train to my gym.

so, i went and worked out hard (as opposed to my typical, perfunctory "tip of the hat" to movement). i took to the sauna to sweat out the toxins that had been plaguing me, then returned to the cat-watching pad to mostly ignore various versions of "law and order" and drift off to slumber.

in the middle of the night i woke up and made myself a steak.