STAND IN THE PLACE WHERE YOU ARE
And despite the fact that today is the coldest day New York has seen since I moved here back in what feels like just before the Renaissance, I walked to work this morning with my jacket open like some careless eight year old, and I became aware that the chip on my shoulder has gotten pretty big this week. The flaps of my jacket waved at the cabs and the brooding head-down walkers as they bumped into me not watching where they were going, and I smiled and didn't give a fuck, wondering each time if these people were really so unable to focus on the stretch of pavement directly in front of them that they'd walk into lampposts, buildings and other people as if we were all random swinging pendulums on some mini golf course.

(They are. Watching people walk straight at a brick wall and then sneer like it's the wall's fault for getting in their way is a sight of which I'll never get bored.)

Maybe I was occupying too much space, or walking too straight. That can be a problem, I know, and it's probably wrong for one to feel entitled to the twenty-odd yards of sidewalk ahead of wherever one is. But my last couple of weeks have had more than my RDA of needy and uncommunicative people, and I needed the confidence of a good don't-mess-with-me style constitutional.

I hate my meek self. Part of why I moved to NYC was to take that passive doormat part of me off like some ugly gray shirt from my childhood that doesn't fit and I never want to wear again. I'm not as bad as I used to be, but the part of me lingers. I've been feeling it a lot lately; one of the working titles for the new CD is The Boy Who Took No For An Answer.