City Living
You know what I miss about having a house? I miss windows that you can sit in all day in the sun, then use to sneak out at night without worrying about someone calling the police. I miss parties for no real reason, with tons of people and no worries about being too loud and making the neighbors angry. I miss overhearing conversations because you know which floor-boards creak and which don't, and where people like to sit in a room. I miss light-switches on both ends of a hall, and outlets every few feet. I miss cooking at 4 in the morning and not having to worry about waking anyone or everyone up. I miss the driveway to just go out in the sun and lie down on the hot ground and savor the heat before its gone. I miss the crawlies - the chirping crickets and the cheeping frogs, the croaking toads and the buzzing cicadas. I miss the deck and I miss the trees. I miss the undisturbed snow and the beauty of an ice-covered world glittering in the sun. The lazy afternoons just basking in the beauty of it all. Knowing where to hide when the world gets to be too much. Knowing all the good hiding places and wondering where they'll keep your Christmas or birthday presents the next year and the next. I miss playing hide and seek with the cats because they know the place better than you do. I miss the endless possibilities and the crazy ideas that just might be workable.
But is it all really worth it?
Some things yes, others not. For the most part I'd say it was a good move. Yeah it changed a lot of things, but a lot of things changed on their own too. Maybe its just best to go with the flow on this and see where it takes me.
Yeah, we're stressed. All of us are. We're broke and half the time we're at each others throats. You wonder where the next meal's gonna come from, and on the rare occasion you do find a few pennies in the safe, they go to your next bill. Unless you find quarters - those are for the laundry. Or bus fare - it's a buck 25 now you know.
The weather ain't as pretty in the city. Here the rain is just rain and the wind is only on the upper floors, or sometimes down the arrow straight streets that just stretch on and on and on. You don't really want to be out in either, because the wind smells of dirt and filth and a conglomerate of poverty, and the rain could probably kill you since you're right next to the Hudson. On sunny days you don't want it to be too warm, because if it gets above about 65 it'll just be too hot, and there's hardly any trees to give you even a little bit of shade. If you need to get out of the sun on the street, a bus stop's your only hope, and they're even hotter since they're just glass boxes in the already blistering rays of light. But if there isn't any sun to breathe life into the world, it just stays a dull grey that you can't help but submit to, in the gloom of it all you just give in.
You see someone shifty on the sidewalk, you don't just think he's shifty, you size him up and decide whether or not you could take him - who's around that would help you, or where you are and who's working that you trust to lock the door once you're inside a shop. You order your pizza and wings from the closest place that hands out fliers, not because you think the food's good or it'll get there the fastest, but because you don't want to make an order for pickup, and the closer they are the more likely they'll do delivery to your front door.
You choose the building with more rules and more people instead of the cheap one family for rent across the parking lot, because the big place is a secure building - and if someone still gets in you can always hide with the little old lady and her cats. You don't have to worry about there not being one of those, because it seems that its required for every apartment building to have at least one little old lady with a dozen cats.
You learn to not really think about it when you see an argument going on in a back alley, you just keep on going and pretend you don't see a thing. You don't even think about the homeless guy going through the dumpster out back looking for bottles and cans - if anything you'll smile and say hello, call him by name and ask him how's pickin's. If he'll be at the usual free diner every Thursday at the church.
You get used to people at bus stops asking you for change. To people just talking about life and how shitty it all is and how it's all some politicians fault - because no one wants to take responsibility for their own lives and just accept that they fucked it up themselves. People on the bus will tell you anything if you feel like talking. You get to know people who's daily routine crosses paths with your own on the 24 or the 58 bus, and you sometimes pay more or less depending on what the driver thinks of you.
It's not completely weird to see people shootin' up on the back step, see kids smokin' like a chimney, see booze in the hands of someone way too young just walkin' down the street. Those guys you used to laugh about that would rap about anything and everything when they were on the other side of the road, they aren't all that out of place after a while. Guys without shirts and their jeans belted around the middle of their thighs, women in shirts that are shaped like bedsheets, baseball caps facing every which way, even inside out. 27 year old mamas smokin' on the front step while their 6 year old kids play on the sidewalk or in the alley; fall down and skin their knees and mama just yells SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU LITTLE WUSS and keeps on smokin her fat ass to death with that look.
The look. It's everywhere. Kind of makes you wonder when you're gonna succumb to it. It's that sort of glazed "how the fuck am I ever gonna get out of here" look, salted with the flavor of a poor economy that isn't sure if it's getting better yet or not. A look tainted with cheap food and old clothing, with alcohol and drugs they can't afford to get but don't dare stop because if they do then they won't have any way to escape the filth anymore.
Sluts walkin' to the corner alone on a dark night - are they really alone or are they waiting for *someone* - whether its a date, or just someone who'll pay, who knows. Who cares? They all begin to look the same after a while. If you try to look nice, you're either a whore for sale or a woman trying hard to find a job. But if you don't dress up at all you're just another bum or wasted opportunity. Stale potential crusting over; milkin' the system for all its worth - it pays in New York to be unemployed.
Sirens at 4 don't seem out of place anymore - firetrucks, ambulance, police; as long as it's not in your building, it doesn't really matter. Churches closing their doors left and right make you wonder if there's anyone left upstairs to listen to the wails anymore, of it they're all just disgusted and pretending we aren't here anymore. Waiting for us to destroy it all on our own, rather than be bothered to do it themselves. I don't blame them. Why taint your hands with the scum of humanity when you don't need to?
The air conditioning only half works, and its silly little filters aren't enough to keep things smelling clean. And you can spray and spray and spray all you want, but that itsn't going to make the stench of the rotting world go away. So you close your eyes and forget for a minute - pretend the whirring fan is the wind in the trees, the old mattress beneath you is the cushion on a swinging bench, and that awful seasick feeling that the smell is setting on your stomach is just because you've been swinging too long.
You let your hair blow in the breeze, take a drink from a sweating glass of coke. Fluorescent lighting becomes a makeshift sun, and you tune out the sound of the world with the comforting tones of classic rock played too loud on old headphones. And for one moment you're back there again.
But it's not home anymore, and as much as you love it, it never will be. And you don't know if it really matters anymore. I don't know. We don't know.
It doesn't matter. You can't have it anyway.