but what I really want is a bag of potato chips. i’ve spent most of the day eating other things precisely to avoid eating potato chips. as I type these words, I am eating my 4th apple of the day.

i’ve had a couple of instances this weekend with people smiling at me as I walk by, and each time, it rather startled me… like some sort of otherworldly sensation. so immersed i am in my own ruminations, so deep within my cocoon, by the time the smiles register, those people have long since past. If I could devise some seamless way for me to catch up with them, apologize and explain:

I’m sorry I did not respond to your smile. When you walked by, I was busy calculating whether or not I could live in NYC on $19,000/year. Maybe if I shared a studio apartment with 16 people in the Bronx, and maybe if I could live on oatmeal and bananas and apples and an occasional bag of potato chips, I could make that work. But by the time I had finished that thought, you were already gone and now I want to make amends for not smiling back in time for you to notice. Would you be open to trying this again? Is there something I could do to make this worth your while?