Most nights, I take boat rides. Alone, with no music and no lights. Just me at the top rocking with the waves, slowly, till my time’s up and I’m headed home. I could speak some bullsballs and tell you it’s therapeutic. No. I just like it.
I had my friend travel over a few weeks ago. We hadn’t seen in a few months. We stayed apart. I was happy that he had come, yet, on some days, we didn’t see each other and on others we didn’t even speak to each other. He kept his distance; I kept my saneness. Win-win. That aloneness, that space. I’ll pause here.
On some of these nights, I have the boys steer so close to the buildings my hands could reach out to touch their fences if I tried. I see. I take in. I allow myself dare. I allow myself dream. But on other nights, those that I fuck believing! and allow myself be sad and go low, I wonder many things. Like where the people are.
Nobody Lives Here came to me on one of these nights, talking to our gate guy. I’d asked about the landlady. He said she was fine, that she was around.
She was? I’d never seen her since! Not even once since she’d handed me the keys to my place. Once or twice, we’d spoken to fix an issue or two. That was it. Whatever issues remaining, the gate guy came to fix.
Ours, and all around, the building and set of flats looked nice, but foreboding. There was an aspect of life and warmth and living that was missing.
We were so ‘perfect’ we fell short.
Humans came and humans left, from lifts and staircases straight to cars that quietly zoomed off. Wheels had replaced walks. Concrete had replaced green. Status had replaced homes. Media had replaced interaction. Everyone minded their business, and everyone seemed so proud of that, but all I sensed around when it came down to it were a people that ached and hungered to be reached out to so they could spill the several shits eating them up, chewing them and spittin’ ’em out.
I have a tat on my left leg. It’s of a man with his knees drawn up, arms crossed, and head tucked in. I had that shit drawn up when I laughed the hardest and did bungee jumps and had life going ‘smooth’ and minded my business. Yet I had that drawn.
LOL