a looking-glass book

narrative pt1

this is a first spewing, done before i had seen the photos. while i think the pics are lit better than i imagined the space, its cool to me to see where they line up. are my thoughts directing, informing, creating the space? or is it the other way around?

Smells like blankets, like smoke and warmth. The space is close, tight. Too many things, too small a space to walk around in, to live in, to think in.

I can close my eyes and still see you there, smoking, puffing, breathing. The keys are crooked the door, with all of its locks doesn't sit quite right on the hinges. There is a larger gap at one corner than another and the light creeps over the floor, with the occasional dog yelp from the hallway. You wanted to hang blankets over the windows, forget about the people, all those people, outside where we are. I couldn't agree more, but then I wanted to forget about myself too - the people inside as well. It wasn't just the people outside that scared me. I wanted to lose myself so completely, so totally. Forget who I was, where I was from, where I was going. Is this what a vacation means to me?

I caught you one night, in bed. Shaking. Crying. You wanted to go back, go back to the way things had been. I pulled a blanket over you and tried to bite my lip. Tried to not say 'shut up. Shut up - you asked for this. You thought this was a good idea when we talked about it.' But I didn't say these things. You know that. I couldn't if I had wanted to. What would we have done if I had? Nothing would have changed. You would have cried more and in the apartment that small, I couldn't escape.

I can’t get rid of my old life and I certainly can’t move from this one. What would I do for a job? How would I arrange my newly bought purchases? How could I convince myself to remove all the things I get pleasure from? Would I stop reading the same authors? Watching the same directors? Writing to myself by dim light? Letter from the past, ghosts of myself float in and out of my vision. Was the person I was gone? Or is he there, a complication right over my shoulder, always whispering to me, examining the person I was. The person I wanted to be. The person I could imagine myself as. I want to cry. Without you, I am so small. And you are asleep.

We only have 2 real rooms you see. One room for sleeping, one room for everything else. I’m not unhappy, not as badly as I made it sound before. But the space, or rather the lack of space, is making me crazy. The idea that I left you. That we left each other without saying goodbye. Without leaving. This is what gets me the most. We move through our day and we don't stop to think what we are doing. We get on a train and wait for our stop to be called. Neither of us know what stop that will be - who will truly leave whom, who will die first. Yet, we ride. We don't question. And keep going, the same way we always have. That's what makes me so sad. So tired.

I don't like routine. I drug you out, I made a mockery of everything I had been given - I turned my back on everything I was and moved away and become someone I wanted to be. Someone I could hate and someone who didn't care about myself. I care too much you see. I care too much about people, about myself.

And the blankets. You made me buy them. I didn't want blinds. And you said blankets then. We found them from one of those street vendors - the ones who set up in empty lots on Saturdays. The blankets smell. I've washed them and nothing comes out of them. The smell lingers and we don't move them. They are precariously balanced on the windows sills and no one can see in. We can’t tell when it is day and when it is night. That's ok. I'm sure the neighbors all think we are constantly getting high. They would be right, but that isn't why we hung them. I don't care about that. I just want isolation. So I can cry myself to sleep.