A Good Day, part one

A surveillance camera watches my dad take a break from pushing the cart. Molly is camera-shy, but her shadow made it into the photo (far right).

Today I took final receipt of the cart. Andy had a lot of last things to say about it, and about life in general. Molly says Andy likes me. I find it too wonderful to believe totally.

He showed me the instructions he had taped to the inside of the propane and battery panels ("My English is not the best," he said, "but I think they're OK"). I noticed the suspension he had built for the rear wheels ("For downward force. In my country I work on buildings, design foundation. Now I do this!" he said, laughing). I tried the work light ("Not car battery, moline battery! Moline battery, like on boat. Car battery not last. Moline battery last a long time!"). He showed me how to unclog the grill burners with a needle. The grill is beautiful, with real rocks to diffuse the flames! He showed me again the on and off positions for the gas valves ("Be careful! It will blow you up! I serious!").

There are too many things to list. From top to bottom he did a beautiful job, attended to every detail. And, after every part he told me about, the same command: "Come back if you have problem with it."

"I like to work on special carts," he said when we were finished, "carts that are different. This is not a good business for me. A lot of people want a cart that cost three hundred, four hundred dollars less. I have to cut out here and here," and he made scooping slashes at the heart of the vehicle.

Later, in his office, my father wrote him the last check, and Andy had some final advice: "When you have problems, you have to think about how solve them. You young, you gonna have a lot of problems -- maybe you get ticket from health department, ticket from the police. A lot of headaches. Some people say there are too many headaches, but what are you going to do? I have headaches but what can I do, close the shop? I think there are no more headaches maybe only when you are in a coffin. You solve the problems."

"And if you smell a lot of gas, don't light barbecue grill."

After initial reluctance ("these clothes ugly!"), Andy poses with my father in front of the cart

Then we were out on the street, me, molly, and neil. and the cart. He and moll tucked their iced coffees into the sink, but I had already finished mine while we were in the office. We were glad we hadn't had to push the cart yesterday, because we were going to push the cart 80 blocks.

[that last paragraph reads like a 5th-grade report. I realize that now, looking back on it. But maybe this day can only be described from afar, and with strange tools. How can I say suavely the unknown we venture into, how smoothly communicate the silver explosion that is me+pushcart? so what if my foal-legs buckle, in word as they do in deed. I say lead the way!]

So we went down the west side (andy's is between 10th and 11th aves). after the coffees were finished we drank lemon-lime gatorade. My dad got all ramped up and giddy and made us jog with the cart for a while. I waved at a few food-cart vendors we passed. Molly, her skin got all flushed and pretty. then we got water and more gatorade.

[We plucked our way around the outer edge of the island. We dived into her into the her bulk. We are lodged there and we rest, prepared to awake in her ancestral heart.]

We were headed to chinatown, to close a deal with the mysterious Mr. Yee.

//cut// more to follow...

Hot Damn!

Bagged it! My beautiful little cart is fully licensed! I can't stop talking in exclamation points! AAAAAAAAGH!

oh, whew, there's my inside voice. Well, it was looking a little dicey for a bit, but we did it: the biggest obstacle to mobile food vending is surmounted.

I'll tell the full story tonight -- right now I want to watch some Wimbledon with Molly before I have to go to work.

Inspection day

Inspection day. Hang in there...

One day till...

One day till inspection. Hard to sleep. Details aplenty. Gotta go. More later.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Williamsburg

It's the 100th Anniversary of the fine bridge, and there is a beautiful picture on the front page of the Times. It looks like maybe it was taken from the top of the Domino Sugar factory.

Back On

Pushcart status: GO!!! (no ready, no set)

Opening Night: 4th of July?? (Independence Day might be right...)

Well well. Ali, whose name turns out to be somewhat closer to Gulam, has come through. We have an inspection on Tuesday.

Tuesday! Shit. My guts, which have been locked in a frustration only relieved by the occaisional eruption of violent mauve, have suddenly turned all to molten, churning metal. I feel a little sick.

There are still many details to work out, from the arangements with Andy to the letter from the garage. But Ali Gulam and I have agreed that it is better to go to the inspection even if we do not expect to pass, because there is a good chance that we will not pass the first one anyway, and this way, even if we fail, we will know everything we have to work out for the next one.

The pushcart -- this experiment -- is a real education in preparing for bad news and preparing for good news. Other than that, I do not currently know what to say.

P.S. I got my personal liscense in the mail, and it looks every bit as good as I had hoped.

English F*ing Weather

Foggy day...

...in London town NYC...

...(yes, that's the sun)...

...but the birds seem to enjoy themselves...

...and besides, there's always Photoshop!

Nice pic

Lockhart Steele has a nice picture of Ludlow street on his site.

Today, already

No luck getting to sleep. I got three hours/two REM cycles after work yesterday and that will have to do me. Thank God this is my Friday. Keeping my eyes on the prize will be important today. Otherwise intolerable states become managable if they have a fixed end-point.

Physically, I feel more dizzy than I should. Mol said it's just the way I'm holding the fatigue. True, but the real question is how to change it. I have been eating better this work-week: good breakfasts and whatnot. Usually my hunger helps me stay tight and high through job-time. At the moment, the thought of work without sleep is /ahem/ difficult. Ironically, my comparative advantage over my normal situation has thrown me off my game a little.

But there is my edge: I feel good in my viscera. Yes, I am starting to be sure of how today must be. Lying in bed earlier, I practiced a little Daoist meditation (called turning the light around): the eye's gaze turned back on the brain for a little targeted alpha wave healing (same as during sleep). I will stay with this: marshal the body's resources to keep the mind's strange drift uninterrupted. Hold on loose, son, but keep your hand on the tiller. Even now I feel the dizzyness wane...

Key points to hold on to: 1) We are not forced to work; the conditions under which we labor may not be our choosing, but work is our necessary expression, and that work cannot, finally, be controlled. 2) Coffee is good.

Standby System

Push Cart status: waiting on Ali to set up Health Dept. Inspection

Opening Night: ??? Maybe the 27th.

I've been knocked back into slow-time. The setback with Ali has stretched into over a week. Apparently, he paid his fine by check (why not money order?), and the Heath Department is making him wait until it clears. This is an irritating situation. I've missed my first (optimistic) opening date already, and I will not make the second (the 20th). The cart has gone from being days away to being weeks away.

Really, I should say that my time-space has suddenly decompressed. Instead of having something that needed to be done every day, I had 2-3 things I wanted to do all last week. Adding to the severity of the change, I took last week off from catering in case I was going to try to open on the 13th. That, and still needing to recover from my cold.

I have not accomplished the transition gracefully. William Gibson writes in All Tomorrow's Parties that grace is not anticipating. Not confusing not anticipating with not planning is still difficult for me. A redux of Plan and Schedual is much needed, but not tonight. Tonight just a few tidbits for my loyal readers, to let you know where I'm at...

A circadian cycle is 90 minutes long. Molly learned this from the TV, Discovery Health Channel. It was in a show about an experimenter who induced narcolepsy in rats and had a scientific love affair with another researcher (including much rapturous talk about how rare such a perfect compliment of approaches was, all lit up with their love light). Tee hee. Mol's description was delicious.

This fact has greatly improved my life. I don't know how sleep-artists like us could have been wrong about such an important point for so long. We were under the distinct impression a cycle was 4 hours long. This mistake has caused problems. Getting up in the middle of a cycle is a bitch, and you can lose hours just trying to shake the fog, particularly if you are sleep-starved. Also, knowing that a 3 hour nap is a real chunk of sleep (2 cycles!) is very helpful.

I set up a big planter with Egyptian mint on my roof. Together with the NYC Honey, it makes my mint iced tea taste great. On the mint tea tip, The Cosmic Cantina (where I tried to get a job once) is serving a version. It costs $2, $3 if you want it sweet (!), and it is kinda mediocre...I also saw a commercial this evening for a bottled mint iced tea. An idea whose time has come!

Last but not least, the Sunday before last I did barbeque roll photo shoot with my bud Jeremy. It was a great time and we got a fantastic picture. I can't wait to see how it comes out. I want to do something like his Chop Sake picture, which I have hanging in my kitchen. Something good to catch the attention of the inebriated.

Now I have to sign off and catch my two cycles before going to work.

sick&etc.

I am sick, with some sort of sore throat/cold sort of thing. Too sick to enjoy myself much, too well to feel comfortable with just lying around (although I did just that for most of the day). I am going to have to try to go to work tomorrow.

I saw the cart on Monday. It is almost finished, and it is bee-utiful. Sunday night I was stressing about all the details, but my worries were unfounded -- in fact, everything is better than I could possibly have hoped. Andy is a true craftsman.

My inspection has been delayed due to bureaucratic difficulties. Something about Ali having to pay a fine for cancelling his original inspection date, or having to change over to a processing ("P") permit from a non-processing ("non-P") permit. It's OK, because it was taking Andy a little longer anyway. He has been very busy, on top of which he has been going to the doctor for a nerve problem which has paralyzed the left side of his face.

It is looking like Friday the 13th is probably out as an opening date. It will be a dissapointment to my father, who kept insisting that it was an "extra lucky" day to start...