Day 80 – June 23, 2014

Three months on the road, three weekends in New York, I want health. I eat bagels for breakfast, pizza for lunch, and beer for dinner–great bagels, pizza, and beer, but a pile of calories nonetheless. In the mirror, I see a weary fatter man glaring back. All those years of svelte Serbian exercising so quickly gone.

In New York, I stay out until almost dawn, and sleep fitfully until noon. I can’t afford the drinking, but alcohol stabilizes my sociable moods. People, cars, buildings are everywhere and yet inescapable. I cannot be alone.

This Libran is out of balance. I desire Nature in this summer season of growth. I shall return to San Francisco and there I’ll become an ascetic. I’ll rise with the sun, eat kale with serenity, run for miles, and then meditate until I levitate.

On Sunday afternoon, David stays longer at the dive bar. Drunk and tired, I journey back by myself to the Bushwick apartment. A light sun descends pleasantly over the Hudson River.

I climb up to the Highline Park to walk twenty blocks south along the West Village. This park repurposes an abandoned elevated railroad into a pedestrian walkway. The gardens along the concrete path burst with early summer. Happy couples lounge on benches, snap photographs, and enjoy the fleeting pleasure of a warm summer evening. I have found Nature. New York is magical.

With two slices of pizza, I watch the sorry end of the soccer match between Portugal and the United States.