We still have yet to have a succesful meeting with our landlord. I hate her. Yesterday, the three of us went downstairs to meet her. It lasted about two minutes. We said that Jillian's boyfriend doesn't live here and that we shouldn't have to pay more rent. She did not know what the hell we were saying and said she would talk to her daugter who would then communicate with us. Today, her terrifyingly tough granddaughter called and left a message on my phone right before I had to go to work saying she wanted to set up a meeting where she would act as translator either today or tomorrow. I didn't have time to call her back before I went to work and passed the message along to Dara.

When I left work this evening, exhausted, already mildy annoyed, I checked my message and there was another message from the granddaughter, left only a few hours after the first message saying, "Hello, this is Iris calling AGAIN!!! I WOULD APPRECIATE IT if you would return my phone calls! You can CALL ME BACK SOON at blah blah blah." And this is one of those instances where language, where not even capital letters can convey tone of voice, the snottiness of this message. Apparently, I should return her messages as soon as I recieve them. Not like I might not have a job or anything.

Dara talked to her sometime after she left this hostile message on my phone, and granddaughter said she wanted to meet with both of us together. This is not going to be easy since Dara and I have opposite work schedules. And we could either meet at eight in the morning or at eleven at night. I cannot tell you how much this irritates me. I am at that point where you are so stressed, so annoyed that you cannot fully verbalize it, that all you can really do, all you want to do is roll your eyes, because it is all so fucking stupid and not even really worth wasting your breath. Today at work, I stole glances at this book of Whitman poetry and I should do this all the time, should spend some time at home with him and realize what is important in this world of ours, that this stuff is not, and certain things are, and that this stuff is distracting me from that, that there always seems to be some this stuff here in New York, that it is too busy, there is never space for contemplation, for being bored. Remember where your thoughts went when you were not bombarded with constant stimuli of one sort or another, those afternoons on your couch, looking out to your empty street with only the occasional car interrupting your thoughts? I remember those moments, and I want to find my way back there. I am really seriously wondering if I can do that here, that I should be able to do it anywhere if I were serious enough, but there are other things. I am constantly stressed about money. I like sun, heat and natural skylines.

And now there is this apartment stuff that is exacerbating the normally bearable obnoxiousness of daily life, making everything just one more reason I hate my life lately. Since I was mugged, I find myself hurrying home from the subway stop, afraid of that dark stretch of Keap Street that I have to walk down, checking over my shoulders occasionally, something I never ever did, making sure my front door is locked, something I have never in my life worried about.

I am listening to these eighties songs that Jillian recently downloaded to my computer, right now Level 42's "Something About You." If you want the soundtrack to this entry, download the fucking song and maybe if you are in the right mood, you can also daydream about past days when you would turn up these songs on the radio and unironically be moved them, because you were in a car moving and on your way to something, on your back from something, just moving you know, and to listen to these songs in a stationary position is something else entirelly, and I am seriously considering dropping it all. I am looking at the Craigslist ads for apartments in Austin, marvelling at how cheap they are and thinking to myself what I will do if it doesn't go well with the landlord. I am conjuring the most lovely runaway fantatsies right now. New Orleans is also in the running, as is Memphis. I will get eight hundred dollars when I move out of this apartment and if I work everyday for the next two months, I can hopefully save enough to start again, to roll those die, blowing on them first, wishing, and seeing if I can get snake eyes this time around.