The morning glare has been a problem since moving in here over a year ago, and I kept meaning to get curtains and shutters, but the $1 worth of Reynolds Wrap seems to work just fine, and it will probably stay there for as long as I live here. Several days earlier I put foil over the bathroom window, since the morning glare from that window is just as bad, and every morning since then I go in there thinking "So much better than before." Regarding the glare, that is.

I also like the near total darkness in here at night.

Tonight it is pouring rain, I am listening to CD #4 of John Coltrane's 1961 Vanguard concerts, eating carrots and cold pizza, and preparing to go to sleep early again.

Last night was, not coincidentally, the first decent night's sleep I've had in a long time. Partly because of the white trash glare-deflector, partly because of the nuclear-powered sleeping pill I took at 9:30 p.m. Even that didn't put me away until after 11:00 and, as happened the last time I gave in to Nytol or Sominex and even Melatonin I am now, 24 hours later, fighting the desire to take that stuff again just to get to sleep.

I don't know what it's been lately, the last few months, but when I should be gone and sleeping I feel myself jump out of this shell and stand beside myself, standing aside from the work at hand without body and without tension. After moments or perhaps years of standing in the darkness I turn away and open the door to the bedroom. It is one of the magic doors I tried to explain to friends in grade school. Instead of leading to the hallway and the living room, it is a stairwell, or an elevator, going someplace where humans do not sleep.

When I wake up from these dreams I can not wait to resume them, so I hurry back to sleep, eagerly smushing my head into the pillow in anticipation of rejoining the journey (to where I can not say).

Lately I have been revisiting last month's notion that it is time to move from New York, or at least time to plan for something else. A new city, new kind of job, a new home. And London seems interesting again. But so do a lot of places. I'm suddenly feeling, as I did after college, that there will not be enough time to live in places like Detroit or Havana or Fiji -- places which interest me but which I can not imagine myself moving to.

I would regret leaving this town, though. I certainly regretted it last time.

Yesterday I walked from Prince Street to Canal Street and then to Columbus Circle in Manhattan. It is not the farthest I've ever walked in this town, but after another night of virtually no sleep I was so full of adrenaline that I could have walked all night and into the morning. I covered most of the streets just north of Chinatown, some streets in Little Italy I'd never seen, some streets by the courthouse I'd never heard of. Discovered an awesome intersection at 31st St. and Broadway, all open and roomy up above the street and into the flailing skyward clutches of the old tall buildings. Between 5th and 6th Avenues I think I walked on every numbered street from 23rd to 42nd Streets. All day long I rationalized the journey as a quest for a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich.

I tend to become comfortable with people, places and things that are simply always there.

I joined the Columbia House CD club a few weeks ago. A CD club and the Bose Wave Radio are two things I've always wanted to do, and since Columbia House doesn't do those stupid automatic shipments any more it seemed like a fun thing. And if there is one thing I'm about that thing is Fun.

Wouldn't it be interesting to do a study of Fun?

I started telling people at work today how I spent my Saturday, walking from Canal to 59th Street, but I got tired of myself. I've been tired of myself for weeks, months, even years, but there's been no way to explain it or do anything about it.

I got a misdirected post card today, from a woman in Japan. I read the thing over and over, trying to imagine who sent it, before noticing that it was not addressed to me but to someone named Albert whose post office box is apparently adjacent to mine. On the front of the post card was a lurid drawing of a big-busted woman, with the URL for the RED HOT MAMA She makes me all right web site in Japan.

When entering the post office these days I can't help wondering if I'll ever have a need for "General Delivery," the method of postal delivery used by transients or people with no address. I almost used it right after moving to Atlanta in 1997, but can't remember why. John Updike once wrote a pithy sequence of paragraphs on what a joy the postal service was, and he was ridiculed for it in the New Yorker. Or was it the Times?

I've had troubles collecting my thought this month.