(no subject)
It's my last day at 211 Welsh Hill, and of course I already moved out nearly a month ago when the semester ended. Now it seems somewhat alien, since Daniel's been living in it by himself practically this whole time. He's watched all of so many TV shows that I'm a bit astounded. I've only seen Mad Men lately, as everything but Glee ended and I needed something to watch to let my brain unravel after long days working for Ridge Equipment. Installing communications hardware is not the toughest job I've ever had, but you make progress continually and it can be satisfying once you have your head wrapped around what exactly it is that you've done. Once you feel like you've accomplished something at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what the work was: it's still satisfying.
I wanted to make this entry because it's the last time I'll be in this house and directly reminded of all the things it reminds me of. The cheap wood paneling, the crooked door mounting, the green carpet that's in my bedroom and the hall only, but not the same anywhere else, where the carpet is cream upstairs and into Daniel's bedroom (which was once Marleen's) and grey and shag down the stairs and all of downstairs. There's the window that looks out over the valley, where you can feel like the king of the mountain as you poop. I don't suppose there's too much that I'll really miss about this place, but instinctively whenever I leave somewhere I get a bit sentimental. You never know when later, you might need to remember someplace. But you can't drag everywhere you've been along with you. You get loaded down. You've gotta keep living like everything's new, otherwise the weight of it all will knock you flat and you'll wash out down a drain. Which drain doesn't matter so much as that it is a drain, because when you wash out down a drain at the last bit it becomes keenly obvious that you've been swirling in circles for awhile, and the circles become so pronounced that anyone can see them. Then again, I just read Dandelion Wine and Bradbury may be influencing me a bit.
I'm sitting on the bed that Marleen gave me after she got a new one. She named it mistress, because it was the other woman in my life, and it was probably the sweetest thing she ever gave me as I'd never had a bigger bed before except in hotels and it redefined my expectations for sleep. Ah, to be able to roll around! Before I'd always have hit a rail or the floor and so it's so nice to not have to worry anymore. It's also nice to be able to lay sideways across the bed, look over my shoulder, and see that I have enough room to roll as though I were going across an entire room. And only recently did I become acutely aware of how small what I consider to be a good size for a room is compared to what my richer friends think. It made me think so much differently of seven people crowded all together in Laurie's kitchen, sitting around the table and on the loveseat and laughing and telling stories. "Why would you want to sit in such a cramped space in the dark, while people smoke cigarettes and with all those animals?" Adam asked me. And I suppose the answer is that it's not the size or state of the place you're in, but the attitude and character it inspires in you. In those enormous houses Adam is used to, where there's enough room for about fifty people to live if they barracked, the space is always full of silence, of awkwardness, and it seems obvious to me that people are meant to crowd together in niches to laugh.
I spent a night in the drunk tank recently, though not for drinking and I'd rather not share why, as it was due to a city of Rockville cop illegally obtaining evidence to press charges which he had no right to press, but all the same... people did not want to be there and stood by the door and stared out and thought constantly of the lives they had outside of that place and how they'd rather elsewhere. They talked constantly of how they wanted to get out, and so and and so forth. What a waste. I looked over the details that people had carved into that barren place, the messages they left in the paint and the floor and the metal, and appreciated the character. I also tried to get people to engage in conversation: to talk about things to fill the time because that works better than trying to watch the clock through a slot in the door. But if anyone didn't want to talk, I didn't press them. I let them hang their heads, hide from the oppressive level of air conditioning in their t-shirts like sad caged children, and rumble their snores at everyone else. The only reason that place didn't weigh more heavily on me than it did was because I decided from the start to accept it for what it was for as long as I was there. Two other people did the same thing, and it was talking to them that made time in that room feel more like a type of experience than a punishment, even though it was jail. Still, for the entire day following it, I was sore and stiff from the hardness of the benches and the floor and every surface, and even slightly miserable because of the paperwork which poisoned my brain and told me that Montgomery County would do its best to make me suffer. Even with a public defender though, I'll be fine. When you get arrested without being read your rights and searched without probable cause before you've been charged for anything in your friend's back yard (as though you were trespassing) it can't nail you. That's just not American justice. Then again, the Rockville cop who arrested me told me that the worst thing he'd ever seen in his 10 years on the job was a house where the occupants had been shot, after the fact. For whatever reason, he keeps a submachinegun hanging from the middle of his cabin ceiling and his back seat is full of mercenary gear, like expired smoke grenades. Actually, the reason is that he does private security contractor work for $80 an hour. He used to beat the crap out of people for a living. He's an outright thug and a soldier, and he should be in Afghanistan getting shot at rather than trespassing in people's backyards.
I wanted to make this entry because it's the last time I'll be in this house and directly reminded of all the things it reminds me of. The cheap wood paneling, the crooked door mounting, the green carpet that's in my bedroom and the hall only, but not the same anywhere else, where the carpet is cream upstairs and into Daniel's bedroom (which was once Marleen's) and grey and shag down the stairs and all of downstairs. There's the window that looks out over the valley, where you can feel like the king of the mountain as you poop. I don't suppose there's too much that I'll really miss about this place, but instinctively whenever I leave somewhere I get a bit sentimental. You never know when later, you might need to remember someplace. But you can't drag everywhere you've been along with you. You get loaded down. You've gotta keep living like everything's new, otherwise the weight of it all will knock you flat and you'll wash out down a drain. Which drain doesn't matter so much as that it is a drain, because when you wash out down a drain at the last bit it becomes keenly obvious that you've been swirling in circles for awhile, and the circles become so pronounced that anyone can see them. Then again, I just read Dandelion Wine and Bradbury may be influencing me a bit.
I'm sitting on the bed that Marleen gave me after she got a new one. She named it mistress, because it was the other woman in my life, and it was probably the sweetest thing she ever gave me as I'd never had a bigger bed before except in hotels and it redefined my expectations for sleep. Ah, to be able to roll around! Before I'd always have hit a rail or the floor and so it's so nice to not have to worry anymore. It's also nice to be able to lay sideways across the bed, look over my shoulder, and see that I have enough room to roll as though I were going across an entire room. And only recently did I become acutely aware of how small what I consider to be a good size for a room is compared to what my richer friends think. It made me think so much differently of seven people crowded all together in Laurie's kitchen, sitting around the table and on the loveseat and laughing and telling stories. "Why would you want to sit in such a cramped space in the dark, while people smoke cigarettes and with all those animals?" Adam asked me. And I suppose the answer is that it's not the size or state of the place you're in, but the attitude and character it inspires in you. In those enormous houses Adam is used to, where there's enough room for about fifty people to live if they barracked, the space is always full of silence, of awkwardness, and it seems obvious to me that people are meant to crowd together in niches to laugh.
I spent a night in the drunk tank recently, though not for drinking and I'd rather not share why, as it was due to a city of Rockville cop illegally obtaining evidence to press charges which he had no right to press, but all the same... people did not want to be there and stood by the door and stared out and thought constantly of the lives they had outside of that place and how they'd rather elsewhere. They talked constantly of how they wanted to get out, and so and and so forth. What a waste. I looked over the details that people had carved into that barren place, the messages they left in the paint and the floor and the metal, and appreciated the character. I also tried to get people to engage in conversation: to talk about things to fill the time because that works better than trying to watch the clock through a slot in the door. But if anyone didn't want to talk, I didn't press them. I let them hang their heads, hide from the oppressive level of air conditioning in their t-shirts like sad caged children, and rumble their snores at everyone else. The only reason that place didn't weigh more heavily on me than it did was because I decided from the start to accept it for what it was for as long as I was there. Two other people did the same thing, and it was talking to them that made time in that room feel more like a type of experience than a punishment, even though it was jail. Still, for the entire day following it, I was sore and stiff from the hardness of the benches and the floor and every surface, and even slightly miserable because of the paperwork which poisoned my brain and told me that Montgomery County would do its best to make me suffer. Even with a public defender though, I'll be fine. When you get arrested without being read your rights and searched without probable cause before you've been charged for anything in your friend's back yard (as though you were trespassing) it can't nail you. That's just not American justice. Then again, the Rockville cop who arrested me told me that the worst thing he'd ever seen in his 10 years on the job was a house where the occupants had been shot, after the fact. For whatever reason, he keeps a submachinegun hanging from the middle of his cabin ceiling and his back seat is full of mercenary gear, like expired smoke grenades. Actually, the reason is that he does private security contractor work for $80 an hour. He used to beat the crap out of people for a living. He's an outright thug and a soldier, and he should be in Afghanistan getting shot at rather than trespassing in people's backyards.