The most recent of these moments was at 2:02 this afternoon, walking through the doors of the GE Building into the area of the Rockefeller Center skating rink. While exiting the building there was (as per routine outside any office building) a cadre of people smoking cigarettes and ignoring each other.

I was unprepared for the stink of cigarette smoke because I was breathing. I got an instant headache and walked into the open area, where it was very windy and almost raining.

There are flags from countries around the world by the skating rink, and while trying to gauge if the instant cigarette-smoke headache would live for another 20 minutes or die quickly I heard those flags whipping in the wind, pelting and slapping themselves as they flailed with the motions of the strong southerly winds. Each clap of the flags sat on top of my mind, and now I don't remember how long that headache lasted.

During the past few days of unexpected moments like this, in which interesting sensations of life enter my mind as if never before, there were no accompanying moments of insight or inspiration. Most of these moments of feeling the life around me ended with themselves.

But coincidentally, today's notice of the flags was less of a pure experience; while walking past the NBC gift shop in the GE Building I looked down the passageway and saw the rest of my life, a life in which nothing much else will ever happen, and a life in which no one but I will be around to talk about it.

In that same moment I realized I will almost certainly not take that cruise I was thinking of taking in January, because I don't want to pay the 25% penalty for traveling alone, and there's little chance of finding anyone who really wants to get on a boat to the end of the world for 11 days. I remembered how many of the traditionally "important" decisions I've made in this adult life were made while walking around doing and thinking about nothing.

While exiting the building into the cigarette smoke I laughed at the prospect of how anyone I know would react if they heard me pouting like this.

I think it is something about Rockefeller Center. It is so brute that it, like the 190th Street #1/9 Subway Station, can make you feel like nothing.

I have had constant thoughts of wretched nothing this month.

Now it is Tuesday night, April 18, 2000, and I am sitting at home. On Friday I will write a check for far-and-away the largest amount of money I have ever expended at one time, and with that my credit card debt will finally be at zero for the first time in almost 7 years (but the end of my student loan debt is still about 3 years off).

Tonight I am experimenting with silence. While making dinner I regarded the sounds of the utensils rubbing against the aluminum foil. The clock on the wall ticked dutifully. Sporadic noises from outside invaded the kitchen like fire alarms. Eating food, the sound of my jaws chewing meat drowned my mind, and the force of my plastic fork made the Styrofoam plate rub against the fake-leather kitchen table. Now I am in the bedroom. The heater is wheezing. I am getting tired of everything. This morning I had to remind myself that the world is generally pretty stable, but that the enemy is in my head.