Bar Harbor

It's the little things you notice. The changes that weren't there before. Sometimes things just happen. Sometimes it doesn't have anything to do with you at all. Of course that can be hard to accept, especially when you still would prefer to actually have control over everything, including all those things that you never really could (or did) in the first place.
I see you crying in the sunshine
I hear you laughing in the rain..
But when you're the only one who leaves dishes in the sink it's easy to fall into thinking that you somehow can. After all, these three rooms belong to me, that's my dust on the floor, and those are my pillows on the couch.

Not that I'm trying to blame anyone -- I chose this apartment myself, I've re-upped the lease three times. I really do love this dinky little place with all of it's faded-in charm and train whistle ambiance. I like my kitchen. I dig the way the painting I paid too much for looks hanging in the living room, and the way that the smaller painting I received as a gift looks out over the bedroom and the hall.
You say you never ever dream at nighttime
You say you only dream when you're awake..
It's just that as much as I know that every corner of this place is set up the way I want it to be, that I'm in control of everything that is and isn't cared for in this place.. there are far too many moonlit nights where the shadows of the broken window blinds project across the floors and bookshelves, over the crisscrossed guitar cables and cat toys until they crawl up the walls and illuminate the swatches of dark fabric dangling from the corners of the poster frames just enough to remind me that it's the things that you couldn't have ever expected have been in these rooms that helped to make it special.
It's the connections you make with what you can't control that makes life interesting.
It's easy I suppose to get caught up in the comfort and conformity that comes from planting a single seed in a single pot, watering and cultivating it so that it blooms exactly the same as it looks on the picture on the side of the package. There's a comfort in being able to stumble from one door to another in the dark and know without thinking that you're not going to trip over anything or stub your toe regardless of how many drinks you've had because the couch is always here, the table is always there, and as long as you keep one hand up on the wall on the left to make sure you're in the middle, it's only so many steps from the door to the pillow.
You get your sunshine from a tab of paper
Then you're sitting in a spinning room..
But what isn't always so clear (until it's gone) is the way that the little surprises stay with you. The bobby pins forgotten in haste, the aromas that linger.
You toss and turn differently when you're not the only one there.
You try to fill the spaces with what you can, but the world keeps turning -- and no amount of 20/20 hindsight or unbridled what-the-fuckism is going to change that. So you go driving around in the middle of the night listening to music simply because you know the scenery outside the windshield will change. You go where you know other people will be just so you don't have stay cooped up where they aren't.
The crowd you're in thinks you're so amusing
They're oh so flattering and so sincere..
A long time ago I came home from my morning slew of classes at FSU to find my (even smaller than the one I'm in now) apartment thoroughly cleaned and rearranged. It was a sign of things to come (both good and bad), but regardless -- it's something that I can't help but remember as a huge turning point in my life.

The shame of it all is that even when agitators are added to your control group, the experiment eventually equalizes. I'm not sure what the half-life is when it comes to crossing the streams of your life, I only know that eventually it seems a natural progression to tire of the surprises -- to crave singularity and sameness (even if it's a sameness of spontaneity). Favorite restaurants run the risk of becoming vortex-like traps or emotionally shadowed reminders, while songs and movies shared can't help but resonate no matter how far the miles.
Crave the comfort.
Curse the routine.
It's like we don't know what we want. Like our free will enables us to choose the same outfit whenever we go to a wedding, a funeral, or a baby shower. I know what I like, but I don't always take the time to discover what else I might like better. Not because I'm afraid, but because I know what my favorite item on the menu is, the way it tastes, the times it was shared, and all that came afterward.
You feel the earth revolving
You see the sun dissolving
You hear the night calling out to you
You have no direction and you have no protection
..What you gonna do when your trip turns blue?
And while indeed there will be time to wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?" -- time to turn back and descend the stair with a bald spot in the middle of my hair.. It's still my apartment.

I know it sounds like a contradiction, I know it sounds like I want to eat my cake and have it too -- but it's more than that. It's about wanting to see what you can become without somehow losing who you already are in the process.

I mean don't get me wrong, I want the surprises. I want the unexpected. It's just that there's got to be a way for it to happen without my mental furniture getting re-arranged (so to speak) -- because despite what it might sound like, the fond memory I talk about now doesn't really do any sort of justice in describing just how incredibly pissed off I was when I came home that day:
What the hell happened to my apartment?
Did you see? Do you like it?
Where's my Black Death Vodka Poster!?
I vacuumed -- did you see?
Did you vacuum up the poster of the Girl with the Black Death Vodka too?
Oh that. I spilled something on it -- it got messed up.
You did WHAT!?
It was an ..accident. But I rearranged the cabinets -- there's a lot more space now.
Wait a minute, where did you put.. How am I supposed to find the..
I spent all day working on this.
It's not that I don't appreciate it, it's just that.. I mean..
..I thought you'd be happy.
Oh what the -- Where's the porn!?
[Listening to:   Big Wreck"That Song" ]

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