4.13.04: Feels Blind
I am obsessed with the cars again. The cars that park between our yard and the neighbor's at all hours, that I know by their license plates, makes and models, but not by their passengers, who are often invisible. I look out the window and a car is there, vacant. The passengers are not visiting me, not visiting Bobbie next door, they have no business with anyone on our street. They have disappeared into the night. An hour later, the neighbor's dog barks, a door slams, the car is running, and quickly, gone. I keep a log of these cars: when I noticed each one, when it disappeared. Once in a while I catch a driver, ask him what he is doing, why he leaves the car there. All of their answers differ slightly, but most claim to be meeting a friend. For various reasons, they do not want to park their car at their friend's house. No, this spot, this no man's land, an unkempt patch of bramble between street lights, between houses, is the place. Sometimes they are hostile when asked why they choose this spot. Sometimes deferential. Sometimes they move their car if asked. Sometimes they refuse. All insist that they are doing nothing wrong. But once confronted, they rarely come back. Instead a different car arrives in the night, noted only by the neighbor's dog, bark, bark, barking at nothing.
I keep a log of the cars that park, the people who loiter, those who I find at the baseball diamond when no games are going on, sitting on the bleachers, waiting for someone or something. Dates, times, license plate numbers, descriptions, names when I can get them. An accumulation of data detailing the secret life of the neighborhood, the comings and goings that wish to be unnoticed. I am hoping to find a pattern, a Fibonacci sequence, a key to the underground rhythm.
Even before our house was burglarized, one of the frustrating things about the neighborhood was not knowing about the people around. Friend or foe? Inquiring neighbor or scouting robber? Crack head or idiosyncratic coot? Seemingly nice people walking by the house would hurl an insult, hostile old men would turn out to be neighborhood stalwarts. After the robbery, I had a great distrust of everyone who passed by. Was this the person who forced the door lock with a crowbar? Who kicked in the front door? Who stole the VCR and a pillowcase from the bed to carry it away in? But all I can do is watch and wait for things to make sense. There is a language to this shadow world which I do not know. Common vocabulary comes first, then phrases, sentences and one day, the numbers, letters and juxtapositions align and comprehension takes place.
Showing posts with label Austin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Austin. Show all posts
Sunday, July 17, 2011
The Lovenurse Files
4.11.04
After spending much of 2003 chronicling the remodeling of the house I bought (see This Old House It Ain't: Home Remodeling With A Complete Amateur") I decided to re-start the journal today, expanding my musings to include journal entries and essays about topics beyond my property line. Although Jamey and I are fully settled in to the house and all of the interior work is done, we are still finding our place in the neighborhood. "Finding our place" is a bit of euphemism, actually. I am struggling with the aspects of the neighborhood that I did not understand when I bought the house - the poverty, the racial segregation, the flourishing underground economies of drugs and prostitution. I focus my home improvement energies these days on the yard and the neighborhood. Grass, planted from seed, has filled in the dirt patches on the north side of the house. Native plants fill limestone edged flowerbeds in front. An unconscientiously water-needing bougainvillea grows at the SE corner of the house and an impractical sapling pear tree leans precariously near the front fence. Potted plants crowd the front and back stoop. I have cleared the weeds and dead tree limbs from the back yard and even from my neighbor's yard next door, I have a plot in the community garden 5 blocks away, I am meeting more neighbors and am participating in neighborhood association meetings.
My friends admire the place: the aquamarine bathroom and the front flowers are the most frequently praised. And since the house was cheap, Jamey and I spend only a small fraction of our incomes on housing expenses. But I often feel like the psychic costs of living among poverty and desperation are high. We had a burglary last August, and since then I have installed a locking fence to discourage trespassers. Junkies and prostitutes are fixtures in the neighborhood, and I find myself amazingly hardened to their plight. I worry that I am becoming a Republican, on the surface disdainful of the nearby desperation, but underneath terrified of succumbing to the ghetto lifestyle which seems to engulf too many of the neighbors. I spend a lot of time thinking about my future, my career ambitions, my financial aspirations, about my place in this neighborhood and this neighborhood's place in the capitalist system.
I have been thinking a lot about purpose recently. About the path I am on, the path I want to be on, the chasm between the two and how to get there from here. It seems that there has been a natural path leading to everything I do now, where opportunities opened up spontaneously to meet my needs and ambitions. For example, I was interested in music, so I got involved with college radio. Then in Austin, I found KOOP. A slot came open, I moved in. A DJ I knew started working at KUT, the NPR affiliate station, and got me on sub rotation there. Eventually I got my own show. But as one path opens before me, I feel the need to beat down some new paths. I was offered the opportunity to host a TV show on the Austin Music Network, which I took. From there, decided to try my hand at video production, and am now conspiring to write a grant to further fund this project. Similarly, with the house, I started out just looking for a place to live, and ended up with fixer upper taking nearly a year's worth of repair. Now that that is over, I'm making plans to buy another house. It seems that I'm just never happy with anything for long. When the path through the forest gives way to a gravel road, I start thinking I'm going the wrong direction. I get impatient to find the super highway to satisfaction. I get sick of little rocks digging into my feet. I head back to the bushes to beat a new path.
The one path that didn't open was the writer's path: the Chronicle job that never went anywhere. The Lovenurse columns that didn't get published. The goals to write everyday that fell by the wayside. This, I think, is the rough path. The machete in the Amazon style path. But maybe I am the kind of person who needs to be hacking down jungle in order to feel satisfied. Or the person who is not satisfied with success. The compulsive risk taker? That makes sense. But a pragmatist as well. I tried the writer's path and it didn't work out. Struggling through meaningless day jobs, inadequate pay and creative frustration is not what I want. But this is the writer's path, at least for most writers, for most of the time.
So guess I'll try again to write again, about the stuff I know. My daily life, which often is focused on the house or the neighborhood, as well as my other in sundry interests: music, radio, TV, law, sociology. My myriad and often conflicting future plans: an academic career in the social sciences, making a living off real estate sales and development, law school and work in public policy, raising children. This journal, like the house, like life, is still a work in progress. Feel free to email me at angmill08@hotmail.com with questions or feedback, just make sure to put "Lovenurse" in the subject header so I can tell your message apart from the Viagra spam.
After spending much of 2003 chronicling the remodeling of the house I bought (see This Old House It Ain't: Home Remodeling With A Complete Amateur") I decided to re-start the journal today, expanding my musings to include journal entries and essays about topics beyond my property line. Although Jamey and I are fully settled in to the house and all of the interior work is done, we are still finding our place in the neighborhood. "Finding our place" is a bit of euphemism, actually. I am struggling with the aspects of the neighborhood that I did not understand when I bought the house - the poverty, the racial segregation, the flourishing underground economies of drugs and prostitution. I focus my home improvement energies these days on the yard and the neighborhood. Grass, planted from seed, has filled in the dirt patches on the north side of the house. Native plants fill limestone edged flowerbeds in front. An unconscientiously water-needing bougainvillea grows at the SE corner of the house and an impractical sapling pear tree leans precariously near the front fence. Potted plants crowd the front and back stoop. I have cleared the weeds and dead tree limbs from the back yard and even from my neighbor's yard next door, I have a plot in the community garden 5 blocks away, I am meeting more neighbors and am participating in neighborhood association meetings.
My friends admire the place: the aquamarine bathroom and the front flowers are the most frequently praised. And since the house was cheap, Jamey and I spend only a small fraction of our incomes on housing expenses. But I often feel like the psychic costs of living among poverty and desperation are high. We had a burglary last August, and since then I have installed a locking fence to discourage trespassers. Junkies and prostitutes are fixtures in the neighborhood, and I find myself amazingly hardened to their plight. I worry that I am becoming a Republican, on the surface disdainful of the nearby desperation, but underneath terrified of succumbing to the ghetto lifestyle which seems to engulf too many of the neighbors. I spend a lot of time thinking about my future, my career ambitions, my financial aspirations, about my place in this neighborhood and this neighborhood's place in the capitalist system.
I have been thinking a lot about purpose recently. About the path I am on, the path I want to be on, the chasm between the two and how to get there from here. It seems that there has been a natural path leading to everything I do now, where opportunities opened up spontaneously to meet my needs and ambitions. For example, I was interested in music, so I got involved with college radio. Then in Austin, I found KOOP. A slot came open, I moved in. A DJ I knew started working at KUT, the NPR affiliate station, and got me on sub rotation there. Eventually I got my own show. But as one path opens before me, I feel the need to beat down some new paths. I was offered the opportunity to host a TV show on the Austin Music Network, which I took. From there, decided to try my hand at video production, and am now conspiring to write a grant to further fund this project. Similarly, with the house, I started out just looking for a place to live, and ended up with fixer upper taking nearly a year's worth of repair. Now that that is over, I'm making plans to buy another house. It seems that I'm just never happy with anything for long. When the path through the forest gives way to a gravel road, I start thinking I'm going the wrong direction. I get impatient to find the super highway to satisfaction. I get sick of little rocks digging into my feet. I head back to the bushes to beat a new path.
The one path that didn't open was the writer's path: the Chronicle job that never went anywhere. The Lovenurse columns that didn't get published. The goals to write everyday that fell by the wayside. This, I think, is the rough path. The machete in the Amazon style path. But maybe I am the kind of person who needs to be hacking down jungle in order to feel satisfied. Or the person who is not satisfied with success. The compulsive risk taker? That makes sense. But a pragmatist as well. I tried the writer's path and it didn't work out. Struggling through meaningless day jobs, inadequate pay and creative frustration is not what I want. But this is the writer's path, at least for most writers, for most of the time.
So guess I'll try again to write again, about the stuff I know. My daily life, which often is focused on the house or the neighborhood, as well as my other in sundry interests: music, radio, TV, law, sociology. My myriad and often conflicting future plans: an academic career in the social sciences, making a living off real estate sales and development, law school and work in public policy, raising children. This journal, like the house, like life, is still a work in progress. Feel free to email me at angmill08@hotmail.com with questions or feedback, just make sure to put "Lovenurse" in the subject header so I can tell your message apart from the Viagra spam.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)