Read: New York Journal Three

“Hey, I got some crack.”
“Wha?”
“I got some crack?”
“You got crack?”
“Yeah.”

And that’s how it all began. Just a small exchange. Supply and demand. You got, I want. No, not ME. These two other guys. I don’t know the crack high, but I do know other highs. Like surviving a trip to the DMV or eating an airline meal and not having my intestines rot from the inside out. You know, daily, survival high. New York presents all kinds of random sound and conversation. All mega mergers of humanity do. It’s okay here. The crack dialogue happened in a nice area. Near a fur shop. Crack transcends. The density of this place is what is so magical. In Cali it’s different. Spread out. We like to specialize, so we dedicate neighborhoods for things like crack.

I had the heat on this morning but now I’ve got the air conditioning blowing at maximum. One side of the street flickers in heat and steam, the other side has people in winter hats. Transition time in The Apple. You can buy ANYTHING here and you can get whatever it is your devil heart desires within eight minutes. Oh, want to buy a shrunken monkey skull, a 40-oz malt liquor, an unlocked cell phone and a copy of a copy of copy of a Chanel television? No problem. You can buy all this at the SAME STORE.

Latino guys on electric bikes delivering anything to anyone at any time. These bikes are the only quiet things in the entire city. The rest is just din din. Shards of glass under my feet. Broken. Shattered even. Windows, dreams or hope. Take your pick. But through it all people transcend. It shouldn’t work. The math doesn’t compute. But it does. Somehow.

If you are gonna smoke, smoke it to the filter.