At least I tried

It's really quite counter-productive, I think, to come to work this early. Starting off when the world's still dark, squint and you'd think it was still night, squint longer and you just might fall asleep.

Then, watching a long-forgotten sun rise, the grayness blushing into a myriad colours - how can you not stop to watch, to pull out a camera and click away as cars zoom by on the highway, as the clicking shutter and the changing ticks of the road-crossing signals mingle into a beat no one else hears but you?

Half an hour is much too short; and much too long because deadlines are as morbid as they sound.

I hate my landlady

I say “I hate” all the time, but I don’t really mean it, because no one does, but it’s easier to say than “I really dislike” and much, much funner too.

But.

I mean, really, lady, the apartment? It’s over a decade old. It’s possible that maybe NOT EVERYTHING WRONG WITH IT IS MY FAULT.

And you do, of course, realise, that every other apartment here has a grille between the main walkways and their balconies? And that the balcony doors are unbarred and made of glass? You know, the stuff that breaks?

Right now I wish someone would break in and vandalise everything, but leave my stuff alone.

All I want are lights that work, unbroken blinds, and some small sense of security.

*kicks wall over and over again*

*nurses injured foot*

I _really_ “dislike” her. To itty-bitty bits.



[45 minutes of Scrubs later and I’m convinced that all the world (dum) needs now (dadum) is Zach, (dum), Zach Braff.]

No place like, not even close

There’s something about all this which somehow makes me sad.




The lamplight glowing, hearth-orange under a dusky, darkening sky. The cars in rows, the same yet not the same, reflecting all degrees of brightness, covered in all degrees of dust. The quiet shops, quieter homes, each fluorescing, some in neon, too, yet blending one and all into an innocuous suburbia.

In the restaurant where we were, the people were alternately raucous and silent in the comfort of their familiarity. The tables, the chairs, the small red altar above the kitchen doorway were all theirs, like land to squatters who squat long enough. The children ran in and out and all about, as the parents’ orders streamed from memory, not menus.

I’ve done all that before, sat in those cars, owned the room, laughed aloud, sighed contented, been that child who shrieked as she ran and somehow lost her knee-high stockings too.

It’s just that…I’ve never done it here, and there’s really nothing that makes you feel quite so far away from home as people who are plainly not.