The New Project

So, here's the deal:
-For the last month, I've been exercising. Haha, but yes. I have started working out. Not too much, but enough to make me feel better. I figured I'd have to do something, because, you know, I've been drunk for the last...five months and counting. So yes, I exercise every morning.

-I read every day. Reading online just does not really count, not in this case, but I read print every day.

With these two things in mind, I decided that I'd start writing every day (work stuff does not count), and that I'd write about the city I live in. 300 words a day. And today's the first. So, here we go...

***

Today, I didn't go to work. Instead, I called in sick and spent most of the day sleeping. Once I'd gotten my shit together, and by together I mean drank my two cups of coffee and smoked myself some cigarettes, I went out into the world, because I had things to do.

I live by Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, and I walk it every single day in order to get to the train. Today, as I walked it, the sun was already down, as it happens because when it's after six o'clock in the evening it happens to be early January, the sun's gone.

I walked down Eastern Parkway, and I realized how few people there actually were on it. Eastern Parkway is a two-way, three-lane (each) road that runs approximately from the eastern edge of Brooklyn to the western edge.

And what traverses down this road? Cars. Lots of cars. And only--for the overwhelming majority, despite the fact that everyone says that nobody drives in this city--cars. Long, long chains of cars; one ever-flowing string of white lights moving towards me, sometimes at alarmingly high speeds, and one string away, going god-knows-where, but never really stopping.

I don't have a license. I know how to drive, but the reality of the situation is that I drive like an old woman--I get scared when I have to make the car move faster than 25 miles per hour. That said, I've been on Eastern Parkway a few times in a car. It acts like a highway, never really slowing down for anyone, or anything, unless it has to, and if you're going to jay-walk, you'd better be careful, because, lord, they really don't give a shit about pedestrian right-of-way. They're out for blood. Watch it.

***

And there we go.