Filtered Water and Pictures of You

I tell a lot of stories, most of them true. I tell them out loud. I write them as fiction, recreating dull scenes as drama, dramatic moments as opportunities for insight which likely didn't come until months later. I write the stories here. This is usually where the stories come closest to truth.

Do I want to walk in the empty streets, with something constant under my feet? Of course I do. Who doesn't? Do I want space, light, and order? Yes, yes, and yes.

And why does it take so long to figure out what one wants, what I want? I'm not sure. I'm just going with it. Why was it so cold last night, when I woke up at 1:59am, to the sounds of the neighbors' balcony party? It was warm when I fell asleep at 10:30. I remember.

Anyway, my heat works well and the cold was temporary. The waking was temporary too and I slept in a cool groove until the sun rose and the radio came on like clockwork (it's a clock too) at 6:17. Somewhere in between 1:59 and 6:17, Seymour (a cat) slept on my feet. Seymour's something constant. Not under but over my feet.

I like my walk-in closet. It's big enough that it could be a darkroom and still allow me to hang most of my clothes.

When I was growing up, all the good stuff was in the pantry: the chips, the pretzels, the potato sticks... all the salty stuff... the little Hershey's chocolates. It wasn't a walk-in pantry but it was big enough to hold a lot of childhood happiness. Today, I just use the one shelf above the refrigerator. There's just enough reachable room for the important stuff: Clif bars, Pretzel Slims (from Trader Joe's), various Kashi cereals, and a small long-borrowed Tupperware of flour for when I try (and often fail) to make my own pizzas. There's water up there too, sometimes. Now I just need the pictures.