I am terrified of taking out my recycling during the day because ONE time my landlord made an offhand comment about how there is a nosy older lady who lives in my building who is super picky about how everything is separated, and I have let this unconfirmed rumor completely dictate this little portion of my life. And so tonight, I obeyed my irrational fear of this person and took everything down just after midnight. By the time I unlocked the gate to the courtyard out back where the bins are, I realized I was completely blasted out of my skull on the edible I’d taken twenty minutes prior. I noticed also that it was quite warm out . . . I checked my phone and it was around 65 F, or 18 C for you civilized freaks. It felt like such a waste of a night to go back upstairs too soon. Lured out by the warm nighttime breeze, I went walking in my pajamas, and after some time I ended up two blocks from my building at the foot of an old fountain that dots the center of star-shaped roundabout.

The fountain is of course ringed with naked cross-legged cherubs, and I among them now. I had climbed over the the rim and perched myself there in the same pose as them. So powerful was the current of utter stupidity flowing through me, I did not have a single thought in my head just then. It was beautiful. I sat there silently for a half hour or so, watching my neighbors as they walked their dogs along the adjacent path leading to the cathedral, or else overheard their phone conversations as they encircled the dirt path in the grass around the fountain . . . and just before I left, two people whose common language was English appeared to be at the tail-end of a date that seemed like it was going all right. No one seemed to realize I was a real person sitting there.

Eventually I stood up from the fountain, which was dry for some reason, and began walking again. There are certain buildings in my neighborhood that I’m always interested in seeing at night because one day I hope to live in one of them, and I like to imagine what mine would look like at night. Sometimes people are really good at making their apartments look especially cozy at night . . . you see a place like this and you wonder at it. Tonight I saw this:

I mentioned last night that I’m watching the THREE COLOURS trilogy . . . and, for god’s sake, there they are in the windows! Blue, White, and Red! Tonight I had planned to watch White, and you really should not ignore signs like this, so I figured I really ought to get home and get to it. I turned the corner and kept walking. There was absolutely no one else outside and I felt that dreamlike feeling from yesterday again.

A block from my building, I saw a cat chilling on the sidewalk. I stopped and chilled with her for a while:

Back upstairs, I made coffee and poured a liter of cold water into my thermos. I sat down on the couch and watched the middle film, which I took to be The Funny One. I was into it. It was also the 111th movie I’ve watched since 2024 began.

(Wow! That’s the Palace of Culture and Science, which I saw with my own two eyes last weekend!)

The sun is now shining hatefully and at full blast behind my black-out curtains. Once again I have stayed up way too late . . . this makes the 150th day in a row. By the time I wake up, it will be almost 80 (26.5) degrees outside. Oh well! Time to keep practicing those ridiculous Polish Z’s until I can’t keep my eyes open anymore . . .