Life at the Top

I have the eagles nest for a perch, balcony and all. Life at the top is...how can I describe it? Ah, I'll just say it's rather unique. It's a superb spot for observing life without having to get involved with it in any meaningful manner. It is ideal for the Hermit.
What is a day like living in such a lofty manner you may wonder? Let's see, some mornings there is vomit on the doorstep. Most days there is trash in the stairwell. It may even be the non animated variety. That is during the day on the weekdays. The weekends are a lot different...well, maybe not a lot, there are simply more people around. This is a large building with lots of apartments. It's impossible to say how many people actually live here as everyone that rents here seems to feel the civic obligation or running their very own flop house. Generous of them!
Nights here are the best...just the best of the best. I may be the only person here that doesn't drink or smoke or have wild parties. Some of these people actually work. I would hate to be depending on them to do a good days work.
On quiet evenings all I have to contend with are my downstairs neighbors on their balcony chain smoking cigarettes and bitching about the complaint dejour. It's like having someone smoking in your bedroom if you leave the window open for air. I am convinced that this is how everyone here becomes acquainted. They simply leave their windows open and listen. For some reason unknown to me the folkin her seem to think that if they can't see you, that you can't hear them....isn't that a child's concept? It could be worse. They both work and don't do any heavy drinking or partying. Those are the good neighbors.
Where was I? Oh, yes, a bright spot. One that holds great potential. The huge lawn out back is the stomping grounds for a small skunk. I think it's a female and young by the looks. She has a lot of white on her. She's cute. She keeps the company of one of the multitude of cats that live here. She hangs out with a money cat from the first floor. I've seen them strolling around out there together. I call the skunk Little Cat. I think it's only a matter of time before Little Cat gives some of my neighbors a blast of perfume..sweet dreams are made of this. I relish the thought of a skunk at a lawn party.
Party? Ohhhhhh. Weekends are made for Michelob and apparently anything else with alcohol in it. Sometimes I suspect that even antifreeze if fair game here. The parties are generally on Saturday nights and depending on who is hosting it, it can last until 4 or 5 am. Sunday around noontime, the party people start dragging out bags of bottles and tossing them into the dumpster. It's like some demented Anvil Chorus.
I think weeknights are somewhat less rowdy. Well, maybe not. Last night someone was outside my window in the parking lot going, "OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! JESUS,SHIT, FUCK!" This was at 1:30 am. I had been sleeping but no one could sleep through that racket. When I looked out the window there was a women sitting on the tar with her pocketbook contents on the ground around here and one of her shoes off on it's own. Her two friends were trying to get her up. She could barely stand she was so drunk. It was like something from out of a bad movie. As per the custom here, I yelled out the window at them, "TRYING TO GET SOME SLEEP HERE! DO YOU MIND?" I was nice enough to leave out the swearing and cussing that is considered conversation here. They all yelled, "SORRY!" and staggered on inside. That was last night. Earlier this week I was awakened by some of the same crown at about the same time, with loud wales, "OHHHHHHHHH OHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" This went of four or five times. Needless to say I was awake by then. I yelled out the window, "KNOCK IT OFF!!!!" She was wailing loudly about her friggin' cars gas tank. The strap on the gas tank had broken or something. Anyway, it was worth waking everyone up to share her grief over this?! These things are only a small sample to life's daily occurrences here. No one ever has a problem that starts before the witching hour or a party that ends before they all pass out.
This is only the tales of building 92. I think there are at least four other buildings this size here and I know for a fact that each one plays out their own dramas. In the building across from 92 some women threw her boyfriends stuff out in the parking lot and spray painted it red... Nice people here. They have a lot of class too.
As a parting thought I wanted to mention there are about a million children in this building. It is how people fortify their income. It's common practice to have children for food stamps and welfare handouts, but I digress. The children are okay for the most part. Some of them have potty mouth but how could it be any other way? My point is, it's quiet here until after the children have been fed supper. At this point, they are all sent outdoors and the screaming starts. I mean that literally, screaming. It make me wonder what the poor little tykes have been fed. If I look out the window I expect to see them rolling around on the ground holding their stomachs. This goes on every night that it isn't raining out. What happens when it rains? Do the children not get fed on those nights or do the walls keep the silence? Knotty questions, these!
If you even wondered what life at the top is like..stay tuned in.

Choose A Side of the Door You Like

Last night my neighbors seemed to have a problem choosing a side that they liked. They were in and out 4 or 5 times. That is inconsequential but it did bring me to the thought that maybe that is what governs our lives. Maybe we get to choose the side of the door we want to be on but we don't get a preview so we don't know what is behind the door. It could be the door that takes us to freedom or the door that takes us to jail or to fabulous wealth. The other choice is to stay where we are. I picture it as a sterile white room with no visible features except a straight back white chair in the middle. It is boring but it is warm and safe and food arrives when it should.
Could be Soylent Green for all I know but it's food and I didn't have to work for it.
Not a pretty picture but sometimes I wonder, I just wonder how much of reality is real. Then I have a stroke of genius and realize that reality is only what I believe it to be. I try not to believe it is anything but a dream and that I will wake up sitting on a Downy bed with golden coverlet and pillow bolsters and that I am only 30 and fit as a fiddle and the last 25 years of my life never happened. How long do dreams last anyway?
My mind is rattling around inside my head like a dried pea. It feels as if my brain has shrunk up and dried out, pulled through a knot hole backwards so to speak.
I live in a castle in the clouds now. The whole world stretches before me as I gaze off my third floor balcony. This is a terrific place to listen to the neighbors fight it out. Well....anyplace from here to a half mile away can hear that. It's like the nightly entertainment. Which neighbor will fight with their wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend? It may happen in broad daylight or at 3 in the morning but it will be loud, abusive and long enough to make you utter a few choice words to them both yourself.
I've never understood people that like to air all their troubles for the rest of the world. Maybe I should just do what the other people here do and just stand outside where I can see and hear better. Today 4 people hurried over to a picnic table to get a ringside seat. I swear I saw someone with a box of popcorn. It could have been a coincidence I suppose.
Never a dull moment here. It's too bad people can't just enjoy what they have instead of ripping everything apart and scattering the entrails.