I noticed all the priests strutting their stuff outside the midtown cathedrals last week. It's the first time I've ever noticed anything God-related around Easter.

There must not be enough marketing attached to Easter. Sometimes I wonder how anything in this world makes sense without Marketing attaching poetry to products and seasons.

The last I heard, Halloween was the only holiday left that had not been plundered by Marketeers, but if my experience is any indication, maybe it's Easter. This holiest of days passes me by with nothing to remember it except for alarming news from the Philippines that men of a certain age are having themselves nailed to crosses and beaten to a bloody pulp.

I like the extra daylight. I'm not going to be fit for work tomorrow, though. I thought I'd get an extra hour this morning; instead we lost one, and I slept in. Did I waste 4 years in high school to grow up and not know shit like this?

I've always been confused by daylight savings times. Once, at some time in January, I watched a re-run of the Letterman show when it was on NBC; Dave was carrying on about how daylight savings time was tonight, so turn your clocks back. I think the joke was that his show was not even happening since that body of time was about to disappear anyway, or whatever.

This was in my apartment on Main Street, Oberlin, Ohio, right above the Army-Navy Store. Like the typical David Letterman fan I was almost passed out drunk on the living room floor, and for all I knew Dave was right and the next day really was daylight savings time, whatever the day, the month, the anniversary.

That's why I was late for my radio show that day, and that's what I told the DJ whose show was before mine, and she responded with the requisite level of disgust, mockery, and condescension that I heaped with impunity upon others who were late for their shows over the next 18 months.

My next career will be radio. Which is not to suggest that I have a "career" right now, but it's a good word to throw about in this town. I liked doing radio in college, and for a long time happily imagined a whole life of making $9/hour announcing classical music at radio stations in places like suburban Pennsylvania or the oil fields of East Texas.

Today I slept until what I thought was merely 10:30, but it turned out to be 11:30. Finally trounced the headache that had been blinding me since Friday afternoon, then practiced a lot of Liszt straight until 3:30. Yesterday I bought Volume II of the Liszt Concert Études at the Juilliard bookstore, and soon afterward asked myself right out loud "Why the hell did I buy this?"

Water is pouring loudly through the ceiling-to-floor height pipe in the corner of my bedroom. Outside the bedroom window a policeman just pulled a car over. I think it is raining. It is very windy.

I can't describe how healthy it feels to practice as well as I did this weekend. Leaping from bed and ripping through Paganini-Liszt Études one after another, then spending the requisite 30 or 40 minutes deconstructing cadenza passages from Années de Pèlerinage until they come out right is something that I wish could be shared with another human, but which is only there for the person doing it. You just can't share something like that, though I've been scheming for ways to do just that.

I got up from practicing this afternoon, tired and unfocused. Put on pants and a jacket and went outside with fuzzy plans to ride the subway south to infinity. As it turned out I wanted to get off the train at 34th Street, but stuck with it through 4th Street, then walked the whole length of Bleecker Street at least 3 times. Not sure when the fog lifted, but I walked downtown 10 blocks or so, then back up to 14th Street.

One of these days I know it will happen. The 12-hour subway odyssey, or the 24 hour affair, or however long it takes to ride all 722 miles of NYC subways. I'll brag that I took the subway to its limits and saw all of New York this way, and that is when all will know that I am still just a tourist in this town.

Was thinking vaguely about a rating system for living in this town. You're a real New Yorker if you have x number of 5-borough days per year, xx number of 4-borough days, xxx number of 3 borough days ... the point being that if you only spend your life in Manhattan then you are a tourist here, and probably proud to be snotty and pissed off about it.

Ugh, I'm talking about benign things. I've always hated discussions about the matter of living in New York, just the same as office gossip about who is fucking who and where and at what time. It seems like everyone on earth speaks 12 languages fluently, and we maneuver gracefully among them during daily life, but we can not decide which one to speak when it comes to talking about things like New York City or Microsoft. When these monologues erupt I waste my time no further than sitting quietly through all the buffoonery until it stops for air, then muttering "Yes, very true, Plato, you are so right" to whoever can't stop bringing attention to themselves with a geyser of words about these frivolous points of concern.

I'm just stomping around the apartment right now and running back to the computer once in a while to type in whatever asshole statement jumps to mind.

We're up to 25 pushups a day around here. Tedious shit, doing exercise.

Trying to remember the bold statement that came to me on the C train today.

Mahler 2 on the radio. Pork chop on the stove.

I just ate 2 pork chops and the tips of my fingers feel great!

There was more I had to say.