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It's 2.27, to be exact, and I'm surrounded by odd animals, mostly ignoring me in favour of a moth on the wall. I should have been in bed hours ago, but reading the forums over at TelevisionWithoutPity.com, all the discussion about the commentaries on Season Two's West Wings put a hunger in me like a Pizza Hut commercial to a starving teenager. I downed two of them.
I've been craving things lately. Everything seem so unsettled lately in my life-- I'm at a point of stasis. I'm waiting to work out the business arrangements on my corsets with the charming Jay, I'm wondering what my financial-advisor brother-in-law will have to say to me when he's finished surveying the wreckage of my finances, I'm toying with the idea of moving to West Philly just so I can save some damned money on my astronimical rent and not be in the back-ass-end of nowhere. I heard gunshots again last night, and while I know moving to West Philly will more likely than not increase the frequency of such an occurence, I'd at least have space to plant roses.
Part of this, I know, is a craving for noise and movement and bi-pedal companionship, but I'm not sure that's what I really want. In my last relationship, there was something wondrous about being able to reach out my hand in the middle of the night and feel skin. But I knew-- and I had this conversation with L a few weeks ago-- that I make a terrible roommate. I don't share my space well. We both laughed at how difficult we are to live with, but I think I trump just about anyone I know: the last time I had to share a bathroom was ten years ago in Atlanta. I discovered he had moved my toothpaste and I felt the stirrings of a homicidal rage.
Lying in bed last night, though, I was struck by a weird, disconcerting series of thoughts. I was thinking about what a seemingly permanent wasteland my bedroom is: I have appropriate furniture in there-- some of the only new furniture I've ever bought myself-- but I don't keep the place the way I'd like it. And I realised it's because at some level, I don't connect with my life. Does that make sense? I don't think it does. I just seem to have this strange idea that this isn't permanent, it's not mine, so I don't have to worry about how it looks or what I do with it. And yet, paradoxically, this is my home, my space, and I get very touchy about letting people in for any length of time. I hoard my airspace jealously, and have been known to regret allowing others to stamp it with their presence, even temporarily.
And I'm too quirky to not live alone. Here I am, a woman grown, and I still think letting myself stay up late is a special treat. I have no real reason to stay up til this cool, still hour, yet here I am. Some nights, when I'm so inclined, I sing. I told a potential landlord that I didn't think his space would suit me for that very reason. I'm sure he thought it a euphemism, but I really did mean it: I can really belt it out. At that particular point, I think it was Fiona Apple at four in the morning. I have to stop myself from starting laundry around then, too. Or the dishwasher.
For a year, I lived on a fairly rural road outside the bustling metropolis of Sunderland, Massachussetts. I never did discover if there was a town center. The closest real town-- it had stoplights and shops and sushi and everything-- was Amherst. Northampton was across the bridge, and they had clubs and funky stores and great Mexican, or so I'm told. But on my little road, the last stop for the UMass busses, I had a view of the Berkshires from my bedroom, and nothing across the street but a misty, low field of shade-grown tobacco, shrouded in soft pale cheesecloth, with an old, slat-sided barn weathered to silver, and the riverbank down the other edge, through the thin line of trees. The leaves in the fall were just as spectacular as everyone said they'd be, and the ice on the thin branch-tips in winter was a marvel of natural engineering. When L came up to help me move out, I was glad-- the weird dynamic between us back then distracted me, and lessened my perpetual obsessing on not only my decision to leave, but the fact that I was leaving such a beautiful place.
But was I happy there? Not completely. I said as much to a friend, and they looked at me and blinked. "Well, of course not. You're a city girl."
I watch the streets when I drive through Philly of an evening. I visually devour the people there, almost to the point of pulling over and just walking, walking in the crowds. I imagine myself striding down Walnut Street at dinner time the way some people think of a nice steak or a good home game. The first time my ex and I walked the city, he tried to shepherd me through traffic as I jaywalked. The raised eyebrow stopped him-- I am a city girl. Cities are my black velvet dress. This city is. This one, and London. And Hamilton, Bermuda, such as it is. Not New York-- I'm sorry, Avril, it's family history-- but even Pittsburgh. I almost feel I could curl up and sleep in the spirit of my city-- I'm at home and comorted.
And I live out here in the back-ass-end of nowhere, without my roses. Maybe it's time to move. Or maybe it's just my frustration talking. Isn't stasis just stagnation with a more sterile name?
I've been craving things lately. Everything seem so unsettled lately in my life-- I'm at a point of stasis. I'm waiting to work out the business arrangements on my corsets with the charming Jay, I'm wondering what my financial-advisor brother-in-law will have to say to me when he's finished surveying the wreckage of my finances, I'm toying with the idea of moving to West Philly just so I can save some damned money on my astronimical rent and not be in the back-ass-end of nowhere. I heard gunshots again last night, and while I know moving to West Philly will more likely than not increase the frequency of such an occurence, I'd at least have space to plant roses.
Part of this, I know, is a craving for noise and movement and bi-pedal companionship, but I'm not sure that's what I really want. In my last relationship, there was something wondrous about being able to reach out my hand in the middle of the night and feel skin. But I knew-- and I had this conversation with L a few weeks ago-- that I make a terrible roommate. I don't share my space well. We both laughed at how difficult we are to live with, but I think I trump just about anyone I know: the last time I had to share a bathroom was ten years ago in Atlanta. I discovered he had moved my toothpaste and I felt the stirrings of a homicidal rage.
Lying in bed last night, though, I was struck by a weird, disconcerting series of thoughts. I was thinking about what a seemingly permanent wasteland my bedroom is: I have appropriate furniture in there-- some of the only new furniture I've ever bought myself-- but I don't keep the place the way I'd like it. And I realised it's because at some level, I don't connect with my life. Does that make sense? I don't think it does. I just seem to have this strange idea that this isn't permanent, it's not mine, so I don't have to worry about how it looks or what I do with it. And yet, paradoxically, this is my home, my space, and I get very touchy about letting people in for any length of time. I hoard my airspace jealously, and have been known to regret allowing others to stamp it with their presence, even temporarily.
And I'm too quirky to not live alone. Here I am, a woman grown, and I still think letting myself stay up late is a special treat. I have no real reason to stay up til this cool, still hour, yet here I am. Some nights, when I'm so inclined, I sing. I told a potential landlord that I didn't think his space would suit me for that very reason. I'm sure he thought it a euphemism, but I really did mean it: I can really belt it out. At that particular point, I think it was Fiona Apple at four in the morning. I have to stop myself from starting laundry around then, too. Or the dishwasher.
For a year, I lived on a fairly rural road outside the bustling metropolis of Sunderland, Massachussetts. I never did discover if there was a town center. The closest real town-- it had stoplights and shops and sushi and everything-- was Amherst. Northampton was across the bridge, and they had clubs and funky stores and great Mexican, or so I'm told. But on my little road, the last stop for the UMass busses, I had a view of the Berkshires from my bedroom, and nothing across the street but a misty, low field of shade-grown tobacco, shrouded in soft pale cheesecloth, with an old, slat-sided barn weathered to silver, and the riverbank down the other edge, through the thin line of trees. The leaves in the fall were just as spectacular as everyone said they'd be, and the ice on the thin branch-tips in winter was a marvel of natural engineering. When L came up to help me move out, I was glad-- the weird dynamic between us back then distracted me, and lessened my perpetual obsessing on not only my decision to leave, but the fact that I was leaving such a beautiful place.
But was I happy there? Not completely. I said as much to a friend, and they looked at me and blinked. "Well, of course not. You're a city girl."
I watch the streets when I drive through Philly of an evening. I visually devour the people there, almost to the point of pulling over and just walking, walking in the crowds. I imagine myself striding down Walnut Street at dinner time the way some people think of a nice steak or a good home game. The first time my ex and I walked the city, he tried to shepherd me through traffic as I jaywalked. The raised eyebrow stopped him-- I am a city girl. Cities are my black velvet dress. This city is. This one, and London. And Hamilton, Bermuda, such as it is. Not New York-- I'm sorry, Avril, it's family history-- but even Pittsburgh. I almost feel I could curl up and sleep in the spirit of my city-- I'm at home and comorted.
And I live out here in the back-ass-end of nowhere, without my roses. Maybe it's time to move. Or maybe it's just my frustration talking. Isn't stasis just stagnation with a more sterile name?