Grey's Journal:
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
|
|
|||||||
My
Morning Alarm.
"I AM BACKING UP!" At 5AM in my new room, I bolted out of bed. When I first saw my new apartment building, I was nervous because half of it was above a bar. The other half was above a carpet store. When I got my room assignment, I hoped I was above the carpet store. I wrongly feared the bar. I imagined endless, loud bar music that would never let me sleep. But I was wrong. The bar closes early most nights. The carpet factory is the loud one. "I AM BACKING UP!" It sounded like the man was in my room. The architect who designed the windows did a poor job. The hinge is at the top, so the window opens by pressing out the bottom. The result is a triangular shape that reflects and amplifies all street noise into the room. "I AM BACKING UP!" Outside my window, a delivery truck was dropping off carpets. "Shut up!" I yelled in a bleary, sleep filled voice. "I AM BACKING UP!" was the reply. As the sleep fell from my mind, I was struck by the uniformity of the voice. A few moments later, I realized there wasn't anybody yelling outside. It was the truck itself. A talking truck woke me up at five in the morning. Well, at least I don't need to buy an alarm. The
Shower.
I walked into the small closet in my flat that contained the shower. A string hung from the ceiling. It connected it a small box with a little button that said 'on'. I pulled the string. 'Off' I looked around to see what had changed. Nothing. Pull. 'On' Look around. Nothing. Pull. 'Off'. Nothing. Pull. 'On.' I'm sad to confess it was several minutes before I abandoned this endeavor. I wanted to know what the switch did, but I had to settle for an imaginary answer: it turns on and off a light somewhere in Buckingham Palace. I undressed and opened the shower stall door. Well, I tried to. Undressing in the small space proved to be a challenge. With my limbs confined to move in the coffin-like space between the closet door and the shower door, it took more time than usual. I should have seen it coming, but I didn't. When I opened the shower door, there wasn't enough space for it to open and for me to get in. I wasn't going through the trouble of dressing again, so after a careful moment's listening for sounds outside, I opened the closet door, and stepped completely naked into the common area. Immediately I heard keys in the front door. I frantically opened the shower stall door and dived inside just as the door opened. I had averted being spotted in the nude. But inside the shower, a puzzle awaited me. There was only one knob for water. Naked and cold, I tired to figure out the fastest way to get hot water. Seeing only one option, I reached for the knob. Most sane people would never go in a shower and then turn on the water, but as I was forced into this position. I couldn't open the shower door with out opening the closet door, and once again find myself exposed to the common room. I turned the knob. Cold water. I twisted the knob wildly back and forth. Far too fast for the water to respond in time, or for me to learn what action caused what result. I eventually discovered that the single knob provides me with two cruel options: A waterfall of cold water, or a trickle of hot. I have learned to deal with this. However, there is still one thing that frightens me. The hole. There is a hole in the wall just above my head that's about 30cm by 20cm. It looks like someone tried to hastily seal it with a plank of wood. As though they were trying to keep something out. And that plank is awkwardly ajar. Like the something is trying to get out. My imagination runs wild. I stand in the shower, facing away from the hole, to try and keep it out of my mind. But that's worse. When a spider the size of a New York City rat crawls out, I won't see it coming. I'll just turn around one day and find myself out limbed 2 to 1 and out eyed 4 to 1. The
Security Camera
Just inside my door there is a ten-centimeter by ten-centimeter screen on the wall. If I press a button, it turns on for 30 seconds and shows me a view of the front door of my dorm building. I'm hooked. I can't walk by the screen without pressing the button and getting my 30-second peep show of the coming and goings of the residents. What makes this puzzling is that not five meters away is my kitchen window. With a view of the front door. This is a much better view than the small, fuzzy, black-and-white image the camera gives me. But I keep going back. Looking out of the window, the door is boring; looking through the camera, the door takes on an air of excitement. Well, something kept drawing me back until last week. It seems I've pressed the button so many times it no longer works. |
||
|
|
||
| Leave a comment, send an email or join my
mailing list. Copyright © 2005 Wellington Grey  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. |
|
|
||||||
|
||||||