Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Gray day through my bathroom window

The other night I was lying awake, unable to stop all the thoughts running through my head, mainly of all the things I had to do to prepare for the move from my apartment into a new place with The Gryphon.

Aloud, I mused, "There are some things I'm going to miss about this place. I should make a list so I don't forget."

"There's good things about the new place, too," The Gryphon said.

I told him he'd missed the point. Saying I'm going to miss things about the old place doesn't mean I'm not looking forward to moving. But I believe it's important to remember the small details about our lives. This is one reason I've kept a journal so many years.

Among the things I will miss is my bathroom window, through which you can always see the treetops. It can be calming to see that spot of nature, joyous on a bright, summer day, or quietly melancholy when it's gray.

"The new bathroom has a window," The Gryphon said.

"Yes, but it's not the same." It looks out on our neighbors across the alleyway, and so we'll always keep the blinds closed.

I'll miss my neighbors. I'm on good terms with a number of people on my block. While I'll still see them occasionally while walking my dog, I won't see them as frequently.

I'll especially miss my neighbor on the corner, the one with two dogs, who served in military intelligence in initial months of the Iraq war. He's just a little younger than my parents, likes folk music and reading and even put a "Veterans for Kerry" bumper sticker on his SUV last year. But as it turns out, he and his wife are also moving. They've sold their place and have a new place in the country.

And I'll miss being able to let my dog, Una, out the back door into a fenced yard. This can be mighty convenient, as you might imagine. I'll also miss my upstairs neighbor and his sweet elderly beagle, Billie, who's friends with Una.

There are many things I won't miss, of course, such as the water in the basement, which constantly had me on edge, given I had no choice but to use that space as storage. I kept everything in plastic storage tubs, and most of it seems to have survived intact. But I don't know how much longer that would have been the case.

I won't miss the mice, who were a continual problem because of the many holes in the foundation through which they could enter the house. Neither my live traps nor the poison used by my upstairs neighbor could deter them permanently.

And while I like my upstairs neighbor, I won't miss him having loud sex with his girlfriend in his bedroom, which happens to be above my living room.

I also won't miss having to park in the street and pay for a parking permit. I've been nervous about this ever since a neighbor did severe damage to my old pickup truck, Red Arrow, by backing into it. I'd had it fixed by another neighbor who did body work, but have been scared about parking in the street ever since, especially with my 2002 Ford Focus, Moondancer.

Sensitive as I am to the cold, I won't miss the wintry breezes that get in under the old doors, which should have been replaced a long time ago. Just look at the back storm door in the photo above.

Every place has good and bad aspects. Even the worst place I ever lived had one good thing about it. I nicknamed this place the Crackhouse, because it was so run down. It was a cramped, narrow apartment with carpet everywhere, even in the kitchen and bathroom. The windows were old and I had to put plastic over them in the winter. Across the hall lived a neighbor with bipolar disorder, who sometimes used to bang on my door just to offer me teabags from his kitchen or, once, a stick of cinnamon. That's also where The Luser lived off me for a short while, and where bad habits and depression caused me to put on much of the weight I've spent years taking off.

But I liked the kitchen wallpaper, which featured an Asian inspired water scene, with little green islands, green boats and delicate green pagodas. Of course, I'd had to clean the walls with buckets and buckets of water and soap to make them visible, the walls grimed with exhaust from the nearby factories. Once clean, you could look at that watery utopia and imagine a place calm and welcoming.

Despite its clutter and its noise, I liked a lot of things about the Hippie House, the place I lived in State College after leaving Leechboy. My brother sublet me his small bedroom and lived out back in the VW van he was restoring. In the living room, we had a life-sized statue of a friend of ours, an abandoned art project. A seated plaster cast, heavy as stone, sat on her own wooden chair. We spread flowers in her lap and put hats on her head, scarves around her neck.

We had an open door policy in that house, which is house I met my ex-husband. He was passing through town and ended up staying. When we moved out, I kept the sign that used to hang on the back porch, "Clean Beds 20 cents."

The new place is too new to have warm associations with it yet. After the time I've spent lugging boxes of stuff into it, though, I'm beginning to warm to my office. I'm sure there will soon be many things to like about the new place.

Again, that's not the point. The point is noticing the little things around you, to say that you didn't just exist someplace but really lived there.

Una uses mind control to try to convince me
to stop removing items from the apartment

Copyright 2005 by Alyce Wilson

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