Night Rangers

Last night AMA and I went to his office to design my album cover (he's got a good computer there, with PhotoShop and Quark and a scanner), and I think we did a nice job given our relative lack of design experience. It gave me a whole new appreciation for fonts.

But the best part was being in this office building in the middle of the night while most people slept. There is something about staying up all night (esp. working on a creative project) that makes me feel limitless and whole, invincible, invisible...

When we emerged it was 4:00 AM, that ghost world where half the waking souls are living in last night, and half are starting their new day. We were poised in between, not sure if we should go home to bed or roam the city....So we toured the sleeping town in AMA's car. New York is incredible at 4:00 AM....gleaming dark bat cave metropolis.

We started at the bottom of Chelsea and explored old Wall Street, Battery Park, South Street Seaport....then we went to Brooklyn Heights and had a bagel and coffee at Montague Street Hot bagels (decent bagels, open 24 hours). We saw what looked to be some inter-car harrassment on Court Street in Cobble Hill, and as the guy in the little Honda backed up to follow the scared-seeming girl in the white car w/Virginia plates as she turned off onto a side street, we tried to follow them, but lost them both. We drove out to the beach, past Coney Island to watch the sun come up, although that was the one segment of our Night Ranger activities that felt creepy. This beach (I forget the name) is right off the highway, and there's a little parking lot next to it, which this morning was filled with guys in old cars just sitting there...were they waiting for sunrise? Waiting to buy drugs or something? It felt vaguely sinister, and by that time I was purty beat, so we called it a night and went home to sleep.

AMA works in publishing, so when I visit his office I usually grab some free books or galley proofs. This time there was a swell book about Regency England, and a creative visualization-type book about making wishes. The usual manifestation stuff, but it got me thinking about what I'd ask for if I could have anything. I always figured the best thing to wish for is the lack of desire to wish for anything (i.e. complete satisfaction wth just being alive.) So I'm working on making that wish come true. But a really lucrative recording deal would be nice, too. If you were granted one wish, what would it be? Choose one: