hiding 4

I will post a description of hiding 2 and 3 soon, they were, however, uneventful, for the most part.
Today, April 2nd, from 9:30am to 12:30 pm I had committed to hiding in the location bounded by the streets Hollis, Sackville, Bedford Row and Prince. The location I selected was a basement window box that was about 5 and a half feet below the sidewalk. There was the width of the window across and the depth of my body so my eyes were at street level and I had about 2 or 3 body widths of space around me.
It was very cold today. I had planned to try to count the number of times I blinked during the performance, but because I felt exposed by concealing myself I found it challenging to concentrate on anything except how afraid I was of being hurt and how tempting it was to make eyecontact with everyone who passed. I picked a stone inside the window box about four down from the edge to stare at whenever people walked by. It was really difficult to know that I would have to stay here for three hours, since every minute seemed quite long in the experience of the cold and the fear of being 'discovered.'
My feet and back hurt from standing for so long. I tried to think about pigeons, the ocean, listened in on people's conversations.
A couple walked by and a man let out a startled curse as he recognized that what he saw (me) was unexpected. I continued to fight with my eyes to keep them lowered, and tried not to keep an expression on my face. It was most difficult for me to not be excessively aware of my external appearance. I felt more aware than I typically am of other people's gaze and how I appeared when I was being looked at.
I was hoping the police would tell me I had to leave because I didn't think I could keep convincing myself that this was a good enough reason. Nobody is looking for me, I'm not documenting the performance, I could just say I'm doing it and actually not do it, nobody would know the difference. Really. Why choose to hide? how ridiculous is that?
And of course then I heard a voice telling me, hey man, you're going to have to get out of there, you're going to have to do that somewhere else. I looked up, one man and then 2 others behind him. I said, I've made a committment to be here for another 2 hours, can I just stay until then? He said, no you're going to have to do your committment somewhere else, you're making the people feel awkward. I looked at him again, I laughed. He didn't get it. I hauled myself up and out of the space. looked at my clock. 10:47. I didn't even make it half way.