Saturday, March 30, 2013

surrounded

Sometimes it just feels like you're the only reasonable person in the neighborhood.  And sometimes, its not just a feeling.  Just the other day, I awoke to a giant industrial size bin being left on our complex's property?  Another unit getting renovated perhaps?  Then I noticed the 'Disaster Clean-Up' van parked on the side of the street.  What the...

Turns out, my next door neighbor is, how do you say, a complete and utter drunk.  So bad that they had to call in a clean-up crew to clean out his place...with him still in it.  They apparently pulled out about 50 large whisky bottles, along with bags and bags of soiled newspapers and other assorted garbage.  Turns out, he's got a cat or two and is so incapable of keeping his unit clean that he just lays down fresh newspaper over the old stuff.  The pile was at least six inches thick, I'm told.  They've attempted to take him to court to have him removed from the building, but because he's a complete basket case, and unable to fend for himself, the buildings owners (and all of us) are stuck with him.  Cost of clean-up?  $10,000.  I wonder if our rent is going up soon?

Across the hall are the new tenants, you know, the ones I mentioned in my last post who smoke in a non-smoking building, party until 3:00 am on the regular (they're at it again tonight!) and are about as disrespectful  as new tenants can be.  

Then there's the gang in the building next door, who tonight got together to threaten and intimidate someone else on my street after some sort of altercation.  Five cop cars turned up, and the 'tough guys' scurried back into their man cave and played ignorant when confronted by officers.  "I don't go looking for trouble' said the long haired, smooth talker who's constantly talking up how tough he and his boys are, sauntering around town along with his crew like they run the town.  A little smooth talk with the police and they were let off without so much as a warning.  Total, and complete bullshit!  I came this close to walking downstairs and flagging down one of the cop cars to tell them they'd been had...but I know better than to get involved in shit like that...especially when they had a lookout on the stoop making sure nobody talked to the cops.  

Then there's the drunk harpy who seems to 'lose' her keys to her apartment every other day and has to scream at her neighbor through the window to 'fuckin' let her in!  

This is what I'm dealing with.  This is my neighborhood.

I'm a good dude.  I like my apartment...it's home.  But this shit is just getting to be too much.  I'm completely and utterly surrounded by the definition of white trash...and its both embarrassing and depressing.  I can try and find somewhere else to live...but, with my financial situation, I can't really afford to move.  Like so much in my life, I feel trapped and helpless.  Stuck in a situation that I can attempt to control, but really can't.  

What did I do to deserve this?  

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

red

If I were a more confident person, I"d have something to say to the asshole neighbor in my apartment building who insists on running the washer and dryer all day (and night), loading the dryer with what sounds like a bunch of rocks at 11:30 pm on a Monday.  I attempted to stop myself from leaving a terse, but comical note on the dryer asking they not 'wash their rock collection' so late...but Goddammit, I'd like to be able to fall asleep at a reasonable hour tonight, so I left it on top of the dryer hoping common sense would win out.  It appears its more important to these persons that their clothing (or whatever the hell they're drying) get done tonight, because 5 minutes after the dryer's cycle finally ended...they simply stuffed another load into the machine and started it up again.  I hate confrontation, but when it comes to people being totally disrespectful of others, my blood boils and I start to fantasize about getting incredibly loud and aggressive.  I'm a very nice, soft spoken guy 99% of the time...but once you push me over the edge, I can be a scary son of a bitch.  

These new neighbors of mine are creeping into dangerous territory with me.  The smoke billowing from their unit is one thing...the loud party guests another...and now this.  

This could get very, very ugly.

Monday, March 11, 2013

locomotivation

I never seem to know when or where motivation will strike.  I'm a serial short range addict, so they hit hard and fast and only seem to last a few days or weeks at the most.  Sometimes its sparked by something as weighty as survival, such as paying the rent or buying food.  Sometimes its a film, a song or a quote by some famous (or not) person who gets the current buzzing in my brain.  For the past few months, I've been attempting to manufacture motivation by stripping my life of everything.  The things I care about, the things I love, the people I lean on or attempt to avoid.  I've even gone so far as to temporarily move out of my apartment in an attempt to shed myself of the 'fortress of solitude' mindset I seem to wallow in when I'm at home.  It isn't working.

Sure, there's a slightly stronger desire on my part to straighten up and fly right, but I've been here before.  It always passes.  I've never thought of myself as entitled, but the more I look at my life through a telescope, the more I realize I'm a lot closer to pathetic mooch than I am independent free spirit.  At this point, I've pretty much eliminated every 'want' in my life...so I'm certainly not guilty of living a charmed, frivolous life.  I'm poor even though my family is not.  To say I choose to be poor is a half truth of varying degrees.  I could stand to put in a bit more effort everywhere...but, at the same time, I'm quite proud of how I've managed to resist the invisible gravitational pull towards 'adulthood' in all its warped, consumerist, liberal-conservative glory.  That life, and world, is not for me.  However, it leaves me with few options.  Even fewer should I continue to choose to go it alone.  But I look around at the people in my life, and I don't see a single person I could trust to team up with or lean on for any extended period of time.  It seems I'm always paying into that invisible friendship/family bank account and rarely able to withdraw more than a buck or two for coffee.  And I don't drink coffee.

More than anything, I've come to not trust myself.  I know what most of the problems are, and the route to their successful elimination...or at the very least, their taming...yet I continually find myself swimming in black pools of my own design.  Misery.  Anger.  Frustration.  How did I allow myself to become so embittered without at least attempting to keep the sensitive, hopeful soul in me fed?  Probably the same way I've allowed my cupboards to become bare.  Neglect, lack of time and money, and too many forks in the road.

Excuses...that cupboard is far from bare.

After a while, it gets hard to tell your falling.  Then you take a look around and don't recognize the scenery anymore...only the distant light of your past and the fading light of your future...and you realize just how far you've fallen.

Friday, March 01, 2013

stuck