Time is always green
I am not given to envy - because that requires higher-order emotions I have not been capable of for a while - but I find myself somehow envying the tenant next door. He's been singing his heart out in front of God and everybody for four hours. I doubt if he even knew that it had been four hours.
The building we live at - this tenant and I, along with several others - has architecture that, if I am being kind, can only be described as "modern, if by 'modern' you mean something imagined by a blind person who happened to overhear a conversation about architecture several tables away." No offense to the blind. This building is a box. Not an aesthetic box, just a box. The walls have some sort of sound-proofing, but if anyone held a conversation higher than 0.2 decibels in the hallways it would be transmitted at ten within your ears seven units away. I have had a security guard knock on my door at 1:00 in the morning because I had my best friend and her boyfriend at my unit and we were sniggering at how we were all dysfunctional pieces of shit.
It's a Sunday, and the tenant next door is singing, over and over again, a John Legend song accompanied by his guitar. What he lacks in talent he makes up for by volume and sheer enthusiasm, and since only a wall separates the both of us, I am privy to absolutely all of his talent blasting through walls that might as well as have been made of the finest silk they use for stockings worn by women with trust funds the size of the GNP of quite a small country. He would start a verse, bungle a chord, start over. He would complete one rendition, be apparently dissatisfied by how his voice cracked over the second line in the coda, and then start over. And then he would have another go at it, have his third finger twang unpleasantly over the G string in the second verse, and then he would stop, take a deep breath, and then start over. The girl he's going to dedicate this to better appreciate this song, goddamnit.
I lay in bed for ten hours, and when the black birds outside the window stopped croaking the tenant's heart started coming through my walls. It lay bare with all his instrumental accompaniment for the better part of the day, being frustrated, starting over, hiccuping, starting over, finishing, croaking - not unlike the birds four hours ago - and starting over. Sometimes there would be silence for one minute - I assume he was getting a glass of water - and then he would hone his heart once again.
I was still in bed when I heard his door click open and his steps on the hallway.
I hope - I think this is hope, anyway, since the very same things that allow for envy also allow for hope - I hope that the heaviness in his step was because he was carrying his guitar.
I didn't hear any other sound for several hours, except the sinister laughter of children playing from three floors below, and the gears of cars catching as they negotiate the uphill roads outside, and once or twice, in moments of silence, the tick of my watch as I continue to lay on my bed.
The building we live at - this tenant and I, along with several others - has architecture that, if I am being kind, can only be described as "modern, if by 'modern' you mean something imagined by a blind person who happened to overhear a conversation about architecture several tables away." No offense to the blind. This building is a box. Not an aesthetic box, just a box. The walls have some sort of sound-proofing, but if anyone held a conversation higher than 0.2 decibels in the hallways it would be transmitted at ten within your ears seven units away. I have had a security guard knock on my door at 1:00 in the morning because I had my best friend and her boyfriend at my unit and we were sniggering at how we were all dysfunctional pieces of shit.
It's a Sunday, and the tenant next door is singing, over and over again, a John Legend song accompanied by his guitar. What he lacks in talent he makes up for by volume and sheer enthusiasm, and since only a wall separates the both of us, I am privy to absolutely all of his talent blasting through walls that might as well as have been made of the finest silk they use for stockings worn by women with trust funds the size of the GNP of quite a small country. He would start a verse, bungle a chord, start over. He would complete one rendition, be apparently dissatisfied by how his voice cracked over the second line in the coda, and then start over. And then he would have another go at it, have his third finger twang unpleasantly over the G string in the second verse, and then he would stop, take a deep breath, and then start over. The girl he's going to dedicate this to better appreciate this song, goddamnit.
I lay in bed for ten hours, and when the black birds outside the window stopped croaking the tenant's heart started coming through my walls. It lay bare with all his instrumental accompaniment for the better part of the day, being frustrated, starting over, hiccuping, starting over, finishing, croaking - not unlike the birds four hours ago - and starting over. Sometimes there would be silence for one minute - I assume he was getting a glass of water - and then he would hone his heart once again.
I was still in bed when I heard his door click open and his steps on the hallway.
I hope - I think this is hope, anyway, since the very same things that allow for envy also allow for hope - I hope that the heaviness in his step was because he was carrying his guitar.
I didn't hear any other sound for several hours, except the sinister laughter of children playing from three floors below, and the gears of cars catching as they negotiate the uphill roads outside, and once or twice, in moments of silence, the tick of my watch as I continue to lay on my bed.
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