Apartment Investigation

I'm really trying to make this not be a blog about nothing that I eventually stop updating altogether...hence this post where I apologize for not updating (which is actually the first sign of trouble in most soon-to-be abandoned blogs, I think). But my excuse is that I'm in the process of moving to Chicago, first to my generous friend's apartment while she's on her honeymoon and then at the end of October to my new "two bedroom" apartment on the street that I loathed most in Chicago when I lived adjacent to it two years ago.

But when I brought Jaime over as an objective observer who would check my possibly too low apartment-choosing standards (so what if the doors don't match? So what if the designation "bedroom," used in this context, only indicates that the room is neither a bathroom, a kitchen nor a living room? So what if it's on Western, the most heinous street of the Ukrainian Village after Ashland, a.k.a. "Trashland"? So what if my landlord and I joked about signing the lease on the hood of his car, but instead did it inside of his car, while it was running, after he referred to the place as "four walls and a roof"?), not only did she think the place looked all right, but we discovered a discarded banjo on the floor, a sure sign of...something. Something about how this must be the place for me since its current inhabitant, like myself, appears to like the idea of playing the banjo but probably doesn't put in the effort to make that a reality and instead keeps it kicking around on the floor of his "bedroom." However, that's where the similarities end, since two times poking through this guy's personal space without him present revealed:

a) a large assortment of drums stashed around the place, which can only be explained as the result of a horrible breakup with a drummer (let's say the drummer of the dog-fronted deathgrind band, Caninus) who left his/her drums at the apartment, probably after an abortive attempt at a lovers' animal band side project (Felinus? Bovinus? Porcinus? The difficulty of employing any of these vocalistic choices, particularly in the shadow of the commercial and societal impact of Caninus, would strain even the most committed of collaborations), which initiated first artistic and then romantic differences, the ups and downs of which are at the heart of all notoriously explosive vegan temperaments. This no doubt ended with the drummer abandoning the instruments that only seemed to mock his/her vision of a world in which pigs and kitties have as much claim to deathgrind culture as dogs do, and dudeman not being quite able to bring himself to throw them away. Or else he just got a lot of drums.

b) a bunch of robot action figures. I may be still reading Archie comics to such an extent that when my aunt and uncle came to stay and were going to be using my bathroom, I had to do a little shameful item-stashing of my own, but I certainly do not have a collection of robot action figures atop my "closet" in my "bedroom."

Anyway, if the landlady hadn't been standing there, you can be sure that I would have done some more digging around to get to the bottom of this drum mystery and any others that are none of my business. As it is, I'll be moving in before Halloween and less than a year from then some snoopy bastard like myself will no doubt be noting my floor banjo and bizarre collection of Archie comics. Until then, visitors, in very small simultaneous amounts, are welcome!

Email from Jim

Jim writes:

"...also, clement claims he couldn't find a cheaper place to live so he is staying in the place he was last year. it's possible that this is true since it turns out that laura's ONG's main activity is providing free rent and tuition to like 400 kids, so I can imagine everything is taken up. on the other hand, clement has been rocking some awesome red women's jeans recently and i can't imagine that they came cheap."

This is probably only entertaining for like three people in the world, none of whom are reading this, but the Beninese tendency to push the envelope when it comes to what gender or even part of the body clothing was originally designed for is endlessly hilarious. Besides the ubiquitous scowling taxi drivers wearing whimsical 'World's Best Grandma' appliquéd and lace-trimmed denim shirts or forlorn, straight-from-a-Save-the-Children-commercial children wearing as their only dress/tunic a t-shirt that proclaims, 'Talk to the Hand!', you occasionally happen across something really special. In two years, I think this was the best I ever saw:

The title of this photo, for those who aren't sure what they're looking at, is 'turtleneckpantz.'

The Silent Treatment

I realized recently that the only form of punishment I know how to inflict on people who deeply hurt or insult me is to just stop speaking to them. I'm not saying I do this often or that, really, there's anything wrong with refusing to waste your time on people who are, well, a waste of time (I'm writing this as my cat, Mr. Sanchez, unleashes his wrath on my only stuffed animal, Lyle the Crocodile, who seems innocent enough to me but also earned similar animosity from my dog in Benin. I guess some, when provoked, prefer the more direct biting approach, while others stick with the subtlety of the silent treatment). But when it unfortunately does happen, I always think, self-righteously, that cutting off communication altogether or curtly announcing that I "need a break" from the evil Lyle to my victimized Sanchez will be a huge sacrifice, directly in proportion to the wrong committed in the first place. And then they'll pay! Oh, how they'll pay!

Aside from the conceited notion at the root of this--that depriving someone of my presence in his or her life is the cruelest form of revenge imaginable--the problem with the silent treatment is that it really isn't hard for me at all. Beyond a week or two of (maybe) wistfully reorganizing my interpersonal communication habits, including subjecting my still-talked-to friends to a detailed analysis of the deceptively lovable stuffed animal's catalogue of outrageous crimes, I'm more or less smoothly off on a different track, perhaps informally holding interviews for the next offender or interviewing for someone else's version of that position myself. What's worse is that this out-of-sight, out-of-mind wiring is so entrenched in my brain that not only is it easy to drop people who I feel deserve it, but even those who I love, revere and admire--the ones who are the ingredients of all the good in me--sometimes end up on the receiving end of an accidental form of the silent treatment just because I'm bad at keeping in touch. Like the archetypal deadbeat dad, I'll try to make up for this by sending an inevitable apologetic email that in turn makes grandiose promises of letters or packages or even mythical phone calls that never materialize, which then embarrasses me so much that another season of silence commences. Luckily I've managed to make some friends who are similarly challenged in this respect, or who at least don't take it personally when I don't return calls or emails--who somehow don't view it as anything worth dropping me for. Thank goodness.

Which brings me to Benin. When I finished my service at the end of June, I was trying to figure out how I would go about counteracting this inherent inability to pick up the phone and say hello (there's gotta be a disorder I can blame this on! Can't we make one up like all the others that medically excuse human emotion these days?) so that I would remain in touch not only with people--the usual deal-breaker--but, worse, ones who don't have email access, who only speak my ever-atrophying French and the metaphorical common ground with whom I share is still, for the most part, back across the Atlantic. I knew that this would be entirely my responsibility and, after years of hearing about the wunderkind Cobly volunteers who did call and write once they got back to the US, I was also aware that I would not be able to easily fade into the mist with the other ingrate gorillas who had already set a precedent for leaving and never being heard from again. So when I actually did force myself to sit down and call (I admit, partly hoping the phones would be down), I was almost shocked by how great it was hearing my best friend Zita's voice again, hearing my own slipping oddly and effortlessly back into villageois French, and just laughing with her about how neither of us had found a husband yet. I didn't realize until that moment that I wasn't calling just for her sake, but for my own as well.

Maybe an experience like this doesn't merit a novel-length essay, but it is quite a feat for anyone suffering from what I may more accurately describe as the unique cowardice of people who have no trouble nonchalantly yelling "Smell ya later!" as we turn to go but can't bear to say the word "Goodbye." Being able to talk to my friend for the unspecified amount of time during which my calling card went from having 25 minutes to having seven was worth even the painful recognition--the fear of which is at the heart of all the unintentional silent treatments throughout my adult life--that there are people and places I am no longer a part of that I miss terribly. I hope it won't be long before I do it again.

In Which I Play WIth the Format

Still trying to figure out what I like on here--this subdued Valentine's Day theme is appealing to me today, and I swear it's unrelated to what you see below.

However, while this maelstrom of political mudslinging continues to swirl, let's take a moment to set aside our party affiliations and focus on something positive we can all appreciate.

Yes, I'm talking about David Gregory's boyishly adorable haircut. Love that thing!

First Post, or Behold, World, My Important Observations

Yes, I finally have a blog. You may ask why I, unlike almost everyone in my training class and certainly the one after it, waited until after an as-advertised life-changing experience in Peace Corps to add my own reedy voice to the self-referential navel-gazing of my generation. Am I suggesting, your eyebrows may as well be saying, that I, too, deserve to be listened to only because I have a camera in my fake iPhone, a laptop, a belief in my own "wit," and nothing better to do? Wasn't it you (meaning me), you (meaning you) who know me (sigh) may be adding in smug recollection, who once claimed that bloggers don't do anything more than post in painstaking detail how they turned their old-school NES controller into an iPod case, following that with an ambient synth melody-rich playlist to accompany said activity?

To distract you from these imagined accusations for which I have no defense, I offer the below picture. I like the steps up to the door best of all. Welcome to this world in which we live in.