HB COLD

The day that people started getting out of my way on the streets of New York was a good one. I felt proud that I had assimilated well. It meant something special, in an idiotic sort of way. But still, in whatever way it was I had got some respect out there.

This place is a little different. The way you walk on the street doesn't mean a thing. People will still walk right into you rather than getting out of the way, or stop right in front of you on the street, or better yet, stop at the top or bottom of an escalator.

Old ladies are the worst, and since I'm kind of jobless at the moment I am out and about when all the old ladies are out, and it's hard to get mad at an old lady, except for the fact that there are just so many of them. Small, slow, but totally off limits when it comes to yelling or even frustration. It's quite funny actually. I mean there are just to many of them, and in the grocery stores! The place is absolutely littered with pushcarts and old ladies - who, by the way, are almost invariably decked out in fur. Just looking out over the tops of them in the produce section is something to behold. The cheese counter is completely inaccessible.

But what happens when regular looking guy turns into Jake the Snake looking guy? What happens when people look at you and then look away and then look right back? What happens? They get the hell out of the way. That's what happens. On the street, in the store, people see me and then move just enough out of my way so as to not bother me. It's wonderful.

Although I admit it's a bit distracting for others that know me. I ran into an old classmate on the street last night and she couldn't look at me without cracking up and telling me how different I looked. And later on the same walk I ran into another classmate and her boyfriend who couldn't agree if it was me or not. It was.

This brings me to a funny thing. Whenever I walk around the town at night I have my headphones in and the music on. And last night it was dark and misty. So that right there has taken away one of my senses and dulled the other. And since the sense of smell and taste don't really come into the mix on one of my walks, I'm pretty much in my own world. Which is why when Niina and Pancho stopped their pole walking and started shouting at me as I walked out onto the bridge that goes to a nearby island, I didn't recognize them at first. My initial reaction was that there was someone behind me. When I looked around and saw no one I thought that these crazy people must be warning me not to go out onto the bridge. But then I looked at the bridge, the bridge that I just saw them walk out from and thought that they must be mad. But still they yelled again and so finally I took off my headphones and got close enough to realize that they were just my friends saying hi. By the way, all that took place in the span of five seconds, it just drags out a little when writing.

This brings me to the next topic. The island that I was walking out onto, Uunisaari. It is almost always empty, but I have never walked around the whole thing at night - it's tiny - because I always wind up creeping myself out. Well, the dark sky and frozen sea and total emptiness creeps me out, but my imagination helps. And so I walk out, closer and closer to the far beach - really like 40 yards, not far - but each time it creeps the hell out of me. It also doesn't help that I am always listening to creepy music, trying to get myself in the mood for writing the screenplay and its creepiness. But the cold, frozen sea at night, alone, far enough away from the city, it gets me every time,