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2002-11-27 - 11:47 p.m.
I've been neglecting some things lately. a lot of things. I'm sort of angry, to tell the truth. I think I embody the idea of "America" though typing the quotes has made me forget why...ahem.
SO I will tell you about living at 5812 Tipton Way, Los Angeles, CA 90041.
I lived there for about 6 months from June of 1999 to January of 2000.
Memories:
One day I looked out the window and counted 13 stray cats in the backyard.
Skunks lived in the basement. Often they mated there.
Loudly.
At 3 a.m.
If I pulled up the carpet in my room I could have touched them through the holes in the floor.
I woke many mornings with flea bites though we had no pets...but I did see a lot of itchy-looking skunks.
Across the street, behind a thick wall of ivy, a man kept pigs, goats, chickens, geese and one very very loud duck.
I often awoke to the sound of police helicopters and squinted at the spotlights shining into my window.
We lived less than 10 minutes from downtown LA.
I was rarely alone in the house because I had four other roommates. When I was alone I thought a lot about the vacant lot next door and put a wooden dowel into my windowframe.
The front door had a two inch gap underneath it.
We never had rats.
My roommate Jason and I would chase animals out of the basement with squirt guns, except for the skunks...they were cute.
There was a gazebo in the backyard that my roommate Kristy decorated with Tibetan prayer flags.
The backyard was steep and covered in dog feces.
The front lawn died within a month.
For the first week we lived there we locked the front gate and the front door. Afterwards we never locked either of them.
We had house meetings and blamed each other for the dirty dishes and our own misdirected lives.
Strangers could taste anger in their mouths when they walked through the front door.
We had an inflatable moose head hanging over the fireplace.
Semi-permanent residents of the eagle rock motel would pound on my car windows as I drove to work.
The used tire center on the corner had a barbed wire fence.
We all smoked on the front stoop.
There were no solid doors in the house.
My friends and my enemies lived there; and they were one in the same.
The most important part about Tipton Way is what I can't say and what I don't know how to say. Something about it still lives inside me. I learned some very significant things about myself when I was there, things that I don't like. I am worried about what I will see when I move again. I think living at home with my parents has given me a blessing of blindness and a refuge from who I am. I don't want to be again what I saw then. I was unforgiving, to others and to myself.
I want to forgive and be forgiven.
simple.
now, just pretend that what you just read was beautiful, poetic, and written by someone else. and next time you see me, ask me what it sounds like when skunks mate...I'll be happy to give you an auditory demonstration.