you'll lose a good thing

Isn't that always the way it is? You think you are in for the night, tired as all shit, and smoke a few hits from the bong because you are going to look at funny videos on the Internet, and then that's when you get a text to meet up. Oh well, East 87th Street and 2nd Avenue seems far even when not totally blazed.

I am listening to Aretha Franklin's Runnin' Out of Fools and other early Aretha tracks really loud and I can do that now and it feels really good, this freedom to blast music that only I want to hear and to jam out to it without the fear that someone might come home, without wondering how their ears might respond to this.

I saw Woody Allen's To Rome With Love yesterday. I watched it at Kips Bay. I got off at 28th and Park Avenue and walked along a trail of memories on East 28th Street toward the apartment building where Diego used to live when I was dating him, where I spent many nights. Those memories made me feel better, made me realize that these things have happened before, that I come out the other end all right.

The movie was just all right, as just about any Woody Allen movie is lately. But I will go see every last one of them until there aren't any more to be seen. There are hints there of that person you love and for me it's enough to keep suffering through these perfectly acceptable Allen films. I want the genius and maybe that's too much, maybe my expectations are too high, that from another director this movie would maybe be a very good one. I don't know. There was talk about love and cheating and commitment, about the absurdity of life. Getting back to that punchline that closed Annie Hall and that is his beautiful philosophy toward life that can be found in all of his films, including this one, that the reason we do any of it, continue to participate in this absurd march toward death is that "we need the eggs," that it's what makes any of this have meaning. Okay, thinking about it now in retrospect, I really liked the film because it did let me indulge in these thoughts. All the previews before the movie were for love stories. I saw some graffiti near Astor Place about love stories, though I can't remember exactly what the graffiti had to say about love stories. I know it was not kind.

But how far is it really - the Upper East Side?