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Tuesday, September 09, 2008
IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Tom Waits
Swordfishtrombones
Island : 1983
[Buy It]
HUMAN FACTOR
Milemarker
Non Plus Ultra
Paralogy : 1998
[Buy It]
PEOPLE, THE VEHICLES
Maritime
We, the Vehicles
Flameshovel : 2006
[Buy It]
Most mornings, I roll out of bed between 9:30 and 11:00, depending on whether I managed to get to sleep around 1:00 a.m. (early for me) or closer to 3:00 a.m. (more typical). My room has one big window, with a giant blue-green curtain covering the Venetian blinds. On sunny days, the light shining through the blinds and curtain conspire to make my room feel dim but shimmery, blue-tinted, like an aquarium. This pleases me. I get up and restore order to my apartment while I boil water for coffee: put away the paints and brushes strewn about, stow away musical equipment, wash cheese-and-cracker residue off of a plate. I straighten up whatever chaos I'd left behind in the night, because in the morning, I crave order and symmetry. By the time I finish the kettle is singing, and I fill up my water bottle, pour my coffee, gather books and magazines and notepads, and walk onto the porch. It's a wraparound porch, with cracking off-white paint and tapered columns, two of which frame a vista - the house across the street, the road and the tops of the cars parked there, with a frame of bushes and trees and snaking ivy - a vista I've looked at often enough that it has assumed the solidity and formal elegance of a painting to me.
There are a number of other factors that govern my waking time, most of them having to do with people, with the intrigues of coexisting with them. One of my neighbors runs a daycare center out of her home, and sometimes I'm roused by the cries of children who have perhaps been served Kool-Aid and Pop Tarts for breakfast. The sonic character of the play of children in communal, parentless situations resembles that of a horror-movie sanitorium: there are cries, meaningless screams, demented fragments of song and impromptu percussion, atavistic chants. I like children but find them frightening in these petri dish situations.
On Thursdays I typically wake up earlier than I'd like because of the garbage and recycling and yard waste trucks clamoring in the streets. Or sometimes, the young home-owning Republicans across the street (I do not know these people, but because of certain contextual cues - an American flag on the porch, a home security sign on the lawn, an undue obsession with home-and-yard maintenance, and a businesslike efficiency of interaction with each other - I mentally regard them as "the young home-owning Republicans"), rouse me with weedeaters and mulchers and lawnmowers, which they deploy around the crack of dawn because, one presumes, you've got to stay on top of these things lest they spiral out of control. I do not like these people, whom I do not know. I wonder if it ever occurs to them that deploying gas-guzzling, emission-spewing, incredibly loud machines at 8 in the morning, in the service of esoteric cosmetic imperatives, has more to do with sociopathy than civic responsibility. I feel bad about myself for disliking them without knowing them, and worse for feeling certain that, having seen me on my porch, frivously reading my books and drinking my coffee well past noon, they dislike me as well.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe that there are two kinds of people in the world, and those who do not. In the morning, when I get woken up too early by a weedeater, I am one of the former. I think that I am the kind of person who stays up late chasing ephemeral intuitions, and that these neighbors are the kind of people who get up early chasing pragmatic ones. I feel as if some fundamental schism in our worldviews is being illustrated, as in a parable. There is something imperialistic about early-morning, noisy lawn care: you're keeping up your home and letting the whole neighborhood know, almost like a challenge. Meanwhile, I paint in silence. In the mornings I am generally optimistic but can easily tilt into unease and misanthropy, if I have the wrong kind of interaction with someone, and these interactions can be very abstract, not requiring actual contact. I worry about the people around me, and how we relate to each other. My way of being can come to seem furtive and strange to me. I find myself mentally referring to the people who comprise my surroundings as "these humans," a self-excluding formulation that shocks me when it floats into my mind.
I worry that the mailman does not like me, though I've seldom stopped to consider whether or not I like the mailman. He refuses to take a letter I'm trying to mail if I put it inside the box - it just sits there, for days. I have to put any letter I want to mail in the curved metal arms depending from the bottom of the box, where it's threatened by wind and rain and I have to keep checking to make sure it hasn't blown away until he comes to take it. To me this seems unreasonable on the mailman's part - the letter is clearly stamped and printed with my return address, and I feel as if he's being a bit Draconian in adhering to mail-delivery protocols. I feel certain this is a sort of tacit revenge on me for regarding him, simply, as "the mailman." I would like to invite him to have a cup of coffee with me and find out about his family, his fantasy football league, his bachelor's degree in sociology. But he's busy, delivering the mail, and I actually don't want to chat with anyone in the morning - I want to read my books, and make grand plans for the day while my mind is agile and glittering with caffeine. I worry that he thinks I'm some kind of online shopping junkie because of all the brown padded mailers I receive every day, filled with promotional CDs; I worry that he regards me as a typical American overconsumer, sitting on the porch drinking coffee every day, waiting for my booty to arrive. I want him to ask me about all the brown padded mailers so I can set the record straight, but he doesn't ask. I'm suspicious that he's simply throwing away some of the brown padded mailers because there are so many of them and he can. We exchange hellos, him gruff, me overly enthusiastic, and go our seperate ways: malevolent mailman and depraved online shopping junkie, two ships passing in the night. We'll never know each other better than this.
There's this one guy who often walks by my place, a scruffy hipster dude, who always has an acoustic guitar (spray-painted blue) slung over his shoulder, and he plays it as he walks. He never acknowledges me when he walks by - just walks and strums, eyes fixed straight ahead. Sometimes, I carry my own acoustic guitar onto the porch in the morning, hoping that he'll walk by and I can join him in an impromptu duet. But he never appears when I have my guitar. I wonder how he would react to this: would it be an intrusion? Would he feel as if I were making fun of him? Or would he be delighted? My intention is delight, but it's impossible to say. I wonder if he's practicing, or neurotic, or just killing time on his walk. I like him without knowing him, and I like it when he walks by - I can hear him coming before I can see him, and I can hear him trailing away, like a cat with a bell on its neck. I like the unexpected intrusion of music into my life so much better than lawnmowers.
I imagine getting up and following him, playing my guitar; I imagine him not acknowledging me but continuing to play. I imagine us strumming through the neighborhood like Pied Pipers, neighbors streaming out of doors with their own instruments and falling in line behind us, strumming guitars, blowing horns, banging pots and pans, all of these people who live in such close proximity to me, whom I do know in any meaningful sense of the word: the young homeowning Republicans; my landlord, who seems hardworking and kind, and his wife, who did not want to rent me the apartment because of my "shaky finances;" the two middle-aged sisters who've made it clear they aren't much interested in even exchanging hellos with me, who own both a pickup truck and a Mercedes, who convey the impression of having construction jobs but subscribe to Cosmo (the mailman is very careless about properly seperating the mail, and I often find myself making corrective deliveries); the elderly lady who checks her mailbox a depressing number of times per day; the lady with unnaturally red hair who runs the neighborhood watch and has a face like a nervous, corrupt bird (who often walks by with her husband, each with a dog on a leash, and who chatters incessantly at the mute husband in a gossipy, preemptory way while giving me suspicious glances out of the corner of her eye, because she runs the neighborhood watch, which gives her a vested interest in my private life - I, with my strange tattoos and my porch and suspicious hand-rolled cigarettes and asymmetrical hair and coffee or glass of beer; I, with the impression I must convey of being on the verge of throwing a raucous party or trying to sell designer drugs at any moment: obviously, I do not like her either) - that we would all fall in line behind the mystery guitarist, and follow him where ever he leads us. (I would like to know where he's going, for some reason it feels like a place I would like to be.)
This morning, as I sat on my porch reading an article in Harper's, a tall, thin African-American man walked by. (Having been weaned on racial and sociocultural sensitivity, I will usually go to great lengths to avoid mentioning race when describing someone, insisting to myself that it isn't pertinent despite all evidence to the contrary - often such a conversation will involve me going, "You know, he's about this tall, has dreadlocks, sometimes wears a little goatee, favors t-shirts with the collars cut out," before my interlocuter's eyes light up with recognition and they say "Oh, the black guy?" and I sigh and say, "yes.") I mention that he was African-American only because he was older than me and he called me "sir," and I am always uncomfortable to be called "sir" or any other honorific, especially if the person calling me "sir" is older than me, and African-American. He was tall and thin and wore a baggy t-shirt, and he was slicked with sweat, and his face was a rictus of despair, mouth stretched into an almost parodic moue, like a tragedy mask. "Good morning, sir," he called up onto the porch as he walked by, and I chirped "good morning" in return, in a tone I hoped implied enthusiasm and openness, the tone of someone who does not need or want to be called "sir." And then he began to speak, in a tone of voice that sounded like pain incarnate; his voice was high and stretched and he appeared to be on the verge of tears. I listened as he told a long and incomprehensible story about diabetes and bipolar disorder and a some social or medical program that didn't entitle him to take some bus and could he show me the form. I was having trouble keeping up. "I'm sorry," I said, "but I don't understand. Why do you want to show me this form?" He was standing awkwardly in the bushes below the raised porch, talking up to me as if I were a judge. Then it came clear that he wanted bus fare from me, but I had nothing to give him - who keeps cash on hand any more? I told him I had no cash and it was true. I don't know whether or not he believed me - we looked at each other for a moment longer, at an impasse, and he trudged out of the bushes and down the street without another word. I had nothing to give him.Labels: brian, people
posted by Brian
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