At the moment the subway went underground into the Hunters Point subway station I caught out of the corner of my eye for just the briefest instant the image of a steel desk sitting in the middle of a large, otherwise empty expanse of pavement.

To me this made no sense. Even though I was not interested in how that desk might have come to be situated in such a spot, I did wonder if the thing was being put to any use out there. Was there a chair behind it. Could I just walk out there and sit behind the desk? If I did sit behind the desk would important things happen? Would there be important files in the drawers? What about office supplies?

I could not get it out of my mind for several days. Had I really seen a big, steel office desk in the middle of an empty field of pavement? That style of no-nonsense steel desk is my favorite, but I've hesitated to purchase one since moving back to New York. A wholesale furniture outlet a few blocks from my apartment sells them at about $200 each, but it is uncertain as to whether or not they could get it through my front door.

At any rate, today I went out to the Hunters Point #7 train station again, and to my great relief and amazement it was there. The AllSteel-vintage, government issue, sprawling, no-nonsense, big-ass desk was for some reason sitting in the middle of a large, empty lot near the Hunters Point subway station.

I imagined myself sitting behind that desk with all that empty space at my command. There would be no office supplies, but I imagined sitting out there looking busy pretending to organize things and making phone calls through an imaginary telephone and setting up a webcam and making declarations about the governance of this vast space.

There is a place on the way to Cape Cod called "The Head of the Meadow." The Head of the Meadow is an actual physical place (I wrongly used to think that it was in either North or South Carolina), but I always thought of it as the office of an individual who sat behind a desk in the middle of a grassy field and answered all meadow-related inquiries.

"Yes, I am the Head of the Meadow. How may I help you?"

I wanted to be the Head of the Field of Pavement.

It took about 10 minutes to get around the subway station and into a lumberyard across from Hunters Point Plaza. The lumberyard led to the field of pavement, and that lumberyard was an active business. A man using a forklift to move what looked like several hundred pounds of wood onto a truck looked right at me as I nonchalantly walked through the lot. We made eye contact, but nothing seemed to be a problem. If anyone there had asked what I was doing passing through their place of business I am not sure what I would have said. It was 2:30 in the afternoon and I had eaten nothing but a cup of coffee since 8:00 p.m. the night before. I generally pursue these tiny adventures when delirious from hunger and lack of sleep.

The field of pavement is not as big as I had imagined, but it would make for a decent-sized parking lot. And despite the confounded nature of the initial sighting, the spot on which the desk sits is hardly obscure. Anyone coming from Flushing to Manhattan on the #7 train could see it, as could anyone passing through the nearby Long Island Rail Road station. It occurred to me that this ludicrous desk might really be an art snack set up for the edification of the thousands of people who pass it by every day.

It was windy as hell and cold, and I was hardly dressed for the weather. Otherwise I might have stayed out there all afternoon.

I took several dozen pictures, but left without thinking of getting some close-ups of the desk. My loss. Our loss. Maybe I'll go back another day and open the drawers and stay for a spell.

I re-traced my path through the lumberyard and back along the road outside Hunters Point Plaza. From the bridge leading back to the subway station I looked back down at the desk and the field of pavement and tried to remember what had just happened. What did I just do? I could not remember too clearly, and sitting here looking through the pictures does not refresh my memory of the event too much. For the sake of documenting this interesting place I had failed to experience it.

But it was also cold and windy as hell and I was shivering and barely able to string a single thought together. Poor, poor me.

I've had other obsessive fixations pestering my mind the last few weeks. There is a long-distance telephone service commercial that absolutely enchants me. In the commercial a guy goes into a fancy restaurant with his wife/girlfriend, and the maître d asks if they have reservations. The guy says "You'll find it under Washington. George Washington," and he produces a dollar bill, evidently in an attempt to bribe the maître d, who responds with "Sir, that's only a dollar." He says it with sympathetic angst, and the guy with the dollar has a twangy bounce in his eyes. The woman with him is at first embarrassed but later pleased at the tightwad's efforts.

That's all I really remember about the commercial, aside from the ending in which the guy and his wife/girlfriend are summarily escorted by the maître d to what I assume is the finest table in the restaurant.

I can not see or think about that commercial without feeling like that exact sequence of events has happened to me. It has not. But any time that commercial comes on I am transported. I can smell the air in that restaurant, hear the hapless chatter from the other tables, feel the bright, tacky paint on the walls bristle against my eyes and strangely fill my ears with its abrasiveness.

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