bluishorange

i woke up at 5 this morning, nearly three hours before my alarm, to the box-crushing, glass-breaking sound of trash pickup at the apartment across the street (you know, the one with the mysterious late-night gatherings outside next to two-toned rusty cars with engines running), and i couldn’t go back to sleep after that. i was awake, the kind of awake you have to put in italics because it’s completely inexplicable, utterly absolute, and unlikely to change anytime soon. i watched the light from the window brighten gradually (but not “imperceptibly” like in tennessee williams plays) and move across the wall until it blinded ewan mcgregor on my trainspotting poster. i am too old to have a trainspotting poster. i listened to the leaves fall off the ficas plant in the corner. it’s been a long time since i’ve watered it, and the leaves that aren’t falling off into the pot are turning yellowish. i looked at the clock again. i thought about work and school and you, but mostly you. are you asleep right now?

now i’m at work and everything has that blurry edge of unreality that comes with only having had five hours of sleep. i am cold and tired and bored, and what i would love more than anything right now is for it to rain. i want to drive to jessica’s new apartment in the rain with amanda, and we’ll play trivial pursuit and drink cape cods and sit on the porch watching the yuppies run to their cars in the storm, their umbrellas turned inside out. it will be adam and jessica (the blue pie) vs. amanda and me (the orange pie), and my team will win, but only because i’ve read every single issue of entertainment weekly cover-to-cover for three years now, and we will win graciously.

but as ryan said last night on the way out of the video store, “it doesn’t rain in america anymore.” so that’s out.

maybe i’ll just get in my car and drive until i run out of gas.

so i’m going back to school full-time. it’s a good decision, i think, since i’ve spent the past year just letting things happen to me, and i’ve spent the past month or so feeling as though my day-to-day existence is pointless in the grand scheme of things. so this is a good plan.

i’ve been a full-time web designer for over a year now. i’ve been cranking out websites conveyor-belt-style, for clients that want websites but don’t really know why, working for a company that cranks out websites but doesn’t really know why. i couldn’t do that anymore.

i’m of the age where i should be graduating from college, but i haven’t. i know that especially in my field a degree is not all that important, but i spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself because i’m still two years away from a degree. i couldn’t do that anymore, either.

the past two weeks have been nightmarish at worst, enlightening at best. there are things i thought i knew, but it turns out i hardly know anything at all.

what i do know is that more often than not that which is truly beautiful will eventually be rationalized away.

it’s hot here. with houston summer, there’s never a happy medium; people dress for the sweltering inferno outdoors, and bring a sweater for the meat lockers that all public places become when air conditioning is pumped in constantly. so i could feel myself instantly defrosting and then roasting when i came out of the office today, tearing off my sweater. my shoes sank into the blacktop, and i pictured chunks of burning, sticky blackness clinging to the soles after each step. i watched my feet as i walked to the car. they’re nice as far as feet go, i think; size nine but fairly slim, and i’m five foot eight anyhow. i’m not much for nail polish on my fingernails, but my toenails are always painted dark red. i was wearing my favorite straw sandals, which are falling apart.

it occurred to me, though, that these are the same feet i see all the time, with the same shoes and the same polish, walking the same path from car to door, door to car, car to apartment, every single day. and i wished suddenly that i could be lifted out of my own life and dropped into another, saving only myself and my friends and family. i wished i was watching my boot-clad feet as i emerged from the covent garden tube station in london, on my way to meet amanda or jessica or ryan for a drink before i headed back to my flat to write or study or code. it’s not a matter of money; i wouldn’t care if my place was a closet, as long as it was different. i want everything new, without the hassle of actually moving somewhere and meeting completely new people. i’d take the new people too, but i still want the current ones.

and i think i’d keep the straw sandals. after all, they are awesome.