Here's a piece of information you may find useful: If you find yourself at the Lincoln Building at 60 East 42nd Street in Manhattan, the code for the lock on the restrooms on the 6th floor is 4312*. The code may be the same on all the floors of that building. Give it a try. Whether or not you have any business at the Lincoln Building you should be able to get in with a photo ID. At the front desk you have to sign in. Sign your name and for the name of the company you're there to see write "sorabji.com."

So if you don't want to use the restrooms across the street at Grand Central, try the Lincoln Building at 60 East 42nd Street, and let me know how it goes.

I found this really strange photograph on the sidewalk yesterday. Before I got a close look at it I thought it was a shot of a two-headed infant:

It appears to be a double or maybe a triple exposed photo. Knowing how it came to look this way doesn't make it any less creepy to see.

The other day I walked to Wards Island. To get there I walked from my apartment to the 59th Street bridge, over that bridge and then up the east side of Manhattan to 105th Street, where I crossed over the strange little pedestrian bridge to Wards Island.

I took a few pictures of these fish heads on the shore at Wards Island.

I also noticed a park I'd never heard of: Mill Rock Park. It's on my maps of the city, but I can't find much information about it. I guess it's a stop-off point for kayakers and swimmers.

It was a pretty long walk, and on the way up I passed the apartment I lived in from 1995 to 1997. The building looked exactly as I remembered it. A 100+ year old building that was slated to be demolished when I moved in -- funny how they didn't tell me that -- but it was saved from the wrecking ball when it was designated a historical landmark.

That was the building where I met Alice.

The other day I found myself telling someone a story I don't think I've shared before.

I moved in to this apartment in 1997. A month or 2 later a guy moved in to another apartment building across the street. I never knew him, but every time I walked past his apartment I could see him sitting at his computer. When I first saw him there he looked clean-shaven and I guess pretty clean-cut. But as time passed I saw beer bottles pile up by his computer monitor, and then I noticed
an ash tray and cigarettes. During the summer cigarette smoke blew out his window like the place was on fire.

A couple of times this past winter I walked past and saw him gesturing and apparently cursing at the monitor. Even though I only saw him for brief seconds, I looked long enough to recognize from the reflections off of mirrors behind him that he was connected to Internet chat rooms, instant messengers, and web sites.

I know I projected my ideas about life onto this person based on only these brief glimpses into his life, but I think he got sucked in over time. He gained a lot of weight, he grew a thick beard, his hair grew way out. The last time I remember seeing him he looked like Charles Manson.

One night a few years ago I was out at 1:30 AM and saw that he was there at his computer, looking irritated and resting one side of his face in the palm of his hand. I went back to my apartment, picked up my camera, and went back over to his window. I held the camera up to the window and took a flash photo, and ran like hell back here. The picture did not out as I hoped. It amounted to a close-up of the screen.

He moved out recently. I saw activity suggesting someone else was moving in, but whoever is there now has the blinds drawn any time I pass by.

Recent Stories
• As I Pass Through My Incarnations
• Two-Headed Infant
• Box of Pencils
• Art of Accumulation
• The Light Switch
• Trial and Error
• Holding Down the Talk Button
• What the Hell. They're People
• Cheating With the Classics
• Blank Walls and Steak Knives
• Is This a Gas Station?
• Long Lines and Lotteries
• Scratches and Pops
• What's So Funny?
• Murder! Murder!
• Feastly
• Why Don't You Want To Live My Life?
• Good-bye, Russian Tea Room
• Smoking is Good For You
• Inappropriate Reactions
• Billboards and Bridges
• I Highly Recommend Eating
• A Good Burp of Gibberish
• Annual Retreat
• Channel 222