I'm housesitting. I sit here in relative boredom and as I write this sentence I think to myself who would want to read this crap. Come to think of it, who would want to read any of the crap you write because you don't do anything and in order for you to have a story you have to do something, right? I'm housesitting. Literally speaking, I am sitting in a house, watching it. I am watching more specifically three men I don't know redo the hardwood,but technically I am housesitting. I listen to them. I listen to them talk, I hear them pee, I listen to them drill, hammer, sand. I hear the house sounds, the neighbors doors slam and the water run through the pipes, the relatively low buzz of the refrigerator or the elecrtronics in every room. I listen and I sit and I think to myself, who would want to read this crap. Who would want to read this crap? I'm asking, really, I am.
Then I think a story doesn't always have to be thrilling to make it relatable, millions of people just sit in their houses. Just because I sit in what I now hasten to admit is more than relative boredom and in someone elses house doesn't make my words completely obselete. What does, in fact make this crap readable is that people can identify on some level with my restlessness, my joblessness for some, my stagnation, my frustration, not just today here, sitting, listening, hearing others accomplish a task beginning to end as I might have in a different situation in a different place at a diffent time, but they can identify with my position as a post grad here stagnant in my place in life, unsure and unavailable. Many are in this same place, people in transtition, because life is full of change and it rocks your worlds and you cope as you can and we cope in funny ways. There are entire films about these stages of life The Graduate, Wall Street even, Breakfast at Tiffany's, American Beauty, all films about people changing their places in life, but all people in different places at life...
Our stories though, no matter how inconsequential, are ours and should been be shared, even if they are just the stories of the days that we sat, and we did nothing but cope with the fact that we were relatively bored, and we listened to the others moving forward and heard them pee, and heard them drill and heard the low buzz of the refriegerator humming.
1 comment:
I watched this film, a remake of a Japanese film in English, and the one line I loved from it was, in some line or another, that we marry because we want someone to be a witness to our life, we want to share our life with someone and know that someone else was there with us through it all. It's not just a reference to marriage though, at least that's not what I love about it. I love the idea behind that, the people around us, our loved ones, they are there to experience life with us, and us with them, and our memory is engraved in each others' hearts, and so we're not forgotten. It's like the footprints in the sand, or engraving our name onto a rock or tree. Each story is special, each life is meant to be remembered, and it's best when it's through the eyes and hearts of our loved ones.
Meri
p.s. don't they close the door before they pee? ever heard of the fan? jeeze ;)
Post a Comment