There's a drawbridge between Queens and Brooklyn. Raise it, the mongrel hordes are here. From which direction, you may ask! Just raise it, raise it, before Greenpoint invades Long Island City.

Today is the 10th birthday of bluishorange.com, which is written by Alison Headley. I think I read bluishorange first in 2001--it had a reddish design with a picture of Alison in the masthead. It was the first I heard of this here blogging racket. This girl has her journal on the internet, and it updates with the newest entry at the top. She's got some separate pages too, like one that's an elegy to her green sunglasses.

I came upon it by googling (actually yahooing) for either a girl named Allison I used to know or the Gin Blossoms' song Allison Road. I honestly don't remember which, but I had had a couple drinks. Incidentally, I still judge blogging success in terms such as "would I show up in the first page of search results for 'Allison' even if I actually had one fewer L?"

I assume you have read one or two of the stories I post here. The fiction stories, I mean. A year ago, I decided I was going to post all the stories I finish here. They are indicated by titles in all caps, and are linked in the sidebar under "friction."

Would you mind giving me a small bit of feedback by telling me about two of them--one you liked better than another one. Something like "I liked A better than B." I think I have enough posted now to do this, and it will help me assess them. You can email me at osmiumblog, using gmail. Or write in the comments. Thank you, and thanks for reading, as always.

Me: When friends tell me they're engaged, in my head I always think duh I knew that. I just assume it whenever they seem like a real couple. The announcement is anticlimactic.

Her: Yes. That's because you're cynical and male.

Me: That would be a great business card. Josh Gallaway, cynical and male. Seriously, that's the important information.

I just spent a day sitting in front of my computer, set up to have nine desktops, switching back and forth between the nine, with data on each one. Every ten minutes I would write down a bunch of numbers, draw a simple picture, scribble it all out, swear, and think.

When I do this, I call it "meditating over data." Before I can wring a conclusion out of a scientific study, I have to do this. Think of this metaphor: science is like building a wall. Some people seem to put the pieces together in their heads day by day, as if building a slow, big wall. I, on the other hand, simultaneously build several smaller messy walls, and then "meditate" to assemble them into a big wall. Neither way is intrinsically better. Everyone thinks and works in his or her own way.

The first research job I ever had was in 1994. Every day for a month, I made fiberglas rings. To do this, I would get a spool of fiberglas, which looks like string. Taking the leading end of the string, I would run it through a bath of resin, thread it through a die, and attach the other end to a mechanical winder to make the ring. Getting the fiberglas through the die was always the hardest part--exactly like threading a needle when sewing, except that fiberglas is even more unruly than thread. Each time, I would spend half an hour threading the die with the string of fiberglas. Over and over, twisting the end to a sharp point, squinting one eye, focusing on the pinprick of light at the center of the smooth, steel die. It was massively frustrating. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the tip would curl over, failing to penetrate the tiny space to the other side.

The longer I tried, my skin would start to crawl. FUCK!! I would scream, unable to stay composed. God DAMMIT!! This was all happening in a huge, chilly, cluttered lab, in which I was always the only person. No one ever saw the ordeal of threading the die. Each time I eventually got it through. I would flip the switch to wind it, take a walk, and sit quietly at my desk till the time was up. I asked around if anyone knew a trick.

"Hmm," everyone would say. "I think Parker worked with that thing a lot in the seventies. You should ask him." This never worked out. You could follow the referrals from one person to the next, forever in a circle--there was no trick. It was easiest just to get finished with it, which I did.

When I'm "meditating," getting all the data, all the facts, all the history, everything, the story, straight--it feels like threading a series of threads through dies. They weave together into an acceptable finished product, but only on the other side of the dies. My job is to get them all through, make it all straight.

Even though people sometimes think I'm smart, I doubt this because of the persistence required to get all the threads through all the holes. A smart person is someone who knows the trick. I don't know the trick--I just make it work, by force of will, out of spite. And if a thread ever goes through too easily, I'm suspicious, I note it and keep my eye on it. Half the time that one's fucked up. Ah, I think. I knew it. Then I do it again.

Before noon on a dreary Sunday, Audra and I were getting the bar together. People were eating in the restaurant, but no one was at the bar. This was the slowest time, early on a weekend, especially a Sunday—no one got take-out, and alcohol wasn’t allowed until after 1 PM.

I don’t remember what we were talking about, but sometimes we would talk shit while getting things together. That made me happy, because Audra liked me, and she had the power to grant acceptance, make me feel good—she was middle-aged, working class, black, and confident. Also, she was a kind person. When Jesus spoke of the salt of the earth, it was Audra he meant.

I looked across the gulf of the barroom, through the lobby and the glass front door, and saw a woman walking across the parking lot. Pedestrians were not common, and I wondered who she was. She must have been coming from the hotel across the street.

“I’ll get the glasses,” I said. Audra didn’t want to carry anything heavy.

“I ain’t mad at ya.”

I came back from the kitchen with two green racks of water glasses. As I set them down, the woman—the pedestrian—was walking up to sit down. She was about 40 and blonde, with a nice leather jacket and purse.

Audra and I both turned and gave her too much attention as she sat down. She had an enormous black eye. It was partly red, and new.

With a lot of poise, she said, “I’ll take a scotch.”

“I’m sorry, we can’t sell alcohol for another [check watch] hour and a half.”

And when I said it, she broke down and cried. She didn’t bawl, but she wasn’t under control either. She looked down at her lap and sobbed for five seconds. Looking back up, she won a momentary victory in the fight to stop.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Thank you.” She stood up, put her purse over her arm, and walked out.

We both watched her go. “God damn,” I said.

Audra shook her head. “Somebody kicked her ass.” She turned away and then looked back as the woman cleared the front door. “That’s a shame. Someone kicked her ass. They sure did.”

At this point, it's the memory of a memory. It's dark and I'm in the hospital. All the lights seem to be off, but there are shafts of white light in the ceiling shining in my eyes. I'm crying and they're trying to get me to swallow something. Occasionally I think about this--why were they working with the lights off? I don't think I'm very old when sitting on the table, in the dark with the lights shining in my eyes. Maybe I'm two. My mom gave me St. Joseph's aspirin and it turned out I was allergic to it.

A second memory is standing behind a glass breezeway door, looking up at my dad. He's wearing something yellow, and my mom is saying Who is that? Who is that? My dad's grown a mustache, and looks strange. His hair is dark, almost black, but his mustache is red.

The memory of the hospital was a real memory at some point--now I'm sure I'm remembering drafts of it. You eventually don't actually remember, but you remember remembering, and the copy survives even though the original is lost. When I was eight years old, was this often-revisited scene, the dark room with the white lights in the ceiling, was it alive and vivid? Now I look back and think of the fifteen year old thinking of the eight year old thinking of the dark room with the lights. The image is preserved, but it's not very elastic. It would be useless to try and determine if the white lights are really in the ceiling, or on a pen-light shined in my eyes.

One physical (non-mystical) model of consciousness says the distinct feeling of being that we experience is caused by thinking about thinking about things. Flows of information are perceived when you become aware of them, and as they layer on each other, you feel that you are you. Remembering memories is similar, only instead of working in instantaneous time, making you conscious, it unifies you as a person across your life.

What if I couldn't remember the dark room with the lights in my eyes? Would I forget to be me? I might change. At this point, I won't forget though, because it's an obsession. I don't want to swallow the cup of medicine they're giving me. They're just trying to help.