It's almost like a comfort blanket. You come home from work and your body and mind get set on autopilot.
Check the mail.
Check the messages.
Go to the bathroom while thinking of what to plan dinner.
Every night it's the same thing. You come home and collect your mail and lay it out in three piles. Bills, junk, personal. These piles have there own places reflecting their importance. Bulk goes above the kitchen garbage. Bills go beside the phone. Personal messages are left on the coffee table to be perused at a later time when the feeling of work slides off your back.
Coming home from work you aren't sure if you want to be in your apartment. It still reminds you of that night. The phone still seems like a hundred pound weight. If you touched it right now you'd be able to see the finger mark in the dust.
Going to the fridge you open it to see last night's take away Italian and a collection of expired condiments. You aren't sure what you're looking for, but as you close the door you know it wasn't in there.
People talk about comfort food and it makes you laugh. Any thought of food and you gag. What food would be able to stay down when your gut feels like this? In the trash is a week's worth of leftovers that were hardly touched when they were new. But of course one has to keep up appearances and you don't want people knowing something's wrong.
Miss Dunsmoore across the hallway watches you like a hawk. She seems to note every item going in or out of your place. It's the way she looks at you as you throw your tissue papers covered in evidence of self-satisfaction that makes you hope it's all in your head.
For dinner tonight you've chosen a simple pasta dinner that should only take 5 minutes to heat up. You know it will have no taste and you know it will make you wish you'd bought something else.
But it's your own fault. You bring this on yourself. It's your choice.
After dinner, which you leave untouched on the table for your maid to clean in the morning you make your way to the sofa to watch TV. Anything to make yourself feel normal. But of course it doesn't work. Unpaid bills sitting by the phone remind you that your cable was cut years ago. The static fills the apartment but you still feel the emptiness.
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A puzzle has many pieces, but he just looks for the one. It exists in every problem and every solution. It is that moment when you know it all fits. That piece that tells you you are on the right path.
At the kitchen table he studies the box's picture of Los Angeles's skyline. There is a piece that fits it all together. He knows that if he can find that piece the whole puzzle will come together.
In the dark he searches with his fingers hoping to find the piece that slides into the last remaining spot.
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Looking out the window the view is disgusting.
Two junkies search garbage for a scrap to eat.
A drug deal goes down with ease in front of the hotel.
A block later the police station slides through my view.
In ten minutes I'll be looking at parking lots and wishing I had the money to shop at those stores.
In twenty I'll be undressing the passenger across from me and imagining all sorts of dirty deeds.
In thirty I'll be ready to scream in frustration at the fact that the woman beside me smells like stale cigarettes and body odor.
In thirty-one I'll be off the train and cursing the slow-walking morons in front of me as I race for a bus that's already leaving the station.
In thirty-two I'll stand and look at high school students and think of my time and situation and wonder what it's all for.
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Where do we go when we think these thoughts?
We look at others and automatically want to rip their throats out.
We think that it would be better to put them out of their misery than to try to deal with them for one more day.
We pleasure ourselves alone in our beds at night.
We use computers to communicate.
We watch as the man in front of us drops his keys. We all watch as he steps off of the elevator, and we all blame other people for keeping quiet.
We watch sex films filtered through a third source downloaded from a mirror site passed to us on a DVD burned by a friend.
We listen to music created behind doors, sold by corporate shills, and downloaded on torrents seeded by millions of strangers.
We pass each other on the street and rarely share a glance of acknowledgement.
We look at ourselves and think we're better?
We look at others and hope we're different?
We look at others and know we're worse.
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You have your rituals. You have your way of doing things. I'm not saying you don't.
But the next time you feel the pulse under your thumbs, it's time to release your hold and allow life to flourish.
