Angst, Part Eighty-Six

They're blowing bubbles off the Washington Monument tonight. It's pretty. I would post a picture, but I haven't got one. I didn't bring a camera. Because I like to keep things in my head.

I might as well interrupt myself to note: If you're thinking this is justanotherangstypost, you are, of course, correct. I have one setting. It's starting to freak me out. So, okay then, two settings: angsty and panicked. I think they're slightly different.

"I saw you roaming about the Baltimore Book Festival. Your pants mismatched your shoes and you appeared to be talking to yourself." That's nobody's quote. That is the thing I was saying to myself, aloud and in a British accent, while roaming. Rehearsal of imagined comments from other (imagined) people to me : a default pastime of mine. Disturbing? Don't answer.

Believe me, if I thought I could be anything other than borderline schizophrenic, I would go ahead and be it. I would stop batting at gnats that don't exist, speaking to myself in the voices of characters I haven't bothered to export to the page where they belong. And for the love of God or whatever, I would stop telling about such things on a blog, as casually as if they were TV ads killing the time between. But I know what happens when I do things, really, in the world outside my head. Nothing. Nothing happens.

See, I haven't found the cure for invisibility. I'm stumped. Tonight they're blowing bubbles off the Washington Monument. I watch people watching them, snapping their pictures, those see-through bubbles that don't come so near as six feet above the heads of tall people before disappearing. I - for all my solidity - might not have been seen at all.

Red Circles

I'm walking down my city street in the rain, at night, with a fridge pack of Diet Coke tucked under one arm. In the other: three plastic bags with fields of bullseyes on their fronts. Steps behind me, someone yells.

"Tar-GET!" Emphasis on the get. Tar-GET. Should I be afraid? What does he mean? Tar...get out of here? Tar...get your ass back to the suburbs? I turn around to look - it's just a tipsy hipster. Nothing to worry about there.

I was already feeling the guilt before he said anything. What self-respecting snooty twenty-something urban-dwelling liberal shops three bags worth at Target on a Friday night? This is Mount Vernon, Charm City, for crap's sake. I think the deal is, I'm supposed to be out smoking in a narrow area, looking dour and European.

But I was at a box store. A big one. In Pikesville. I drove there, polluting all the way. And you know what? I got a pretty two-toned bamboo cutting board for just $10.99.

City living is what I've always wanted - I feel even snootier now that I do things like power-walk to Federal Hill, hustle up the steps, admire the sunset, and hit the bar on the way home - but I do have some adjusting to do. Like, I don't understand how to live without Target. What if I have simultaneous need of a 6-outlet power strip, a strapless bra, and toothpaste? Where do I go? For all their blobbiness, suburban communities are, at least, easy. There's always a vast parking lot, and it's actually ajacent to the destination.

I'm realizing that I'll miss that, the ease of it all. I hate to admit it, because, really, who wants easy? It's a word that means nothing much had to happen. I avoid it on principle. But it is habit-forming; you do one easy thing, and, well, it's just so easy to do more. I'll probably continue to travel out to one Target or another, every once in a while - I'm not rich, so it's not like I can do all my shopping downtown at funky independent stores. Next time, though, I may walk with those little red circles facing in. Hipsters don't have time for practical explanations. And for whatever reason, I care.

Spring

"A place for everything - "

" - and everything in it's place. I know." My mom and I are standing in my bedroom, assessing the situation, discussing the new leaf I'm turning over. It's going to be a tidy leaf. And not just tidy, but clean. I figure I might as well turn it all the way, this leaf.

"Your room is the dustbin of the western world," she'd said with great amusement, a few days earlier, in my cleared-out bedroom at the old apartment. True. I hadn't dusted once in four years and the bunnies were raging out of control. If it had been anyone's mess but mine, I'd have been disgusted. I'd always been one of those people for whom messes were personal extensions, like Pigpen from Peanuts. They were where I was. Without threat of outsiders coming around to crinkle their noses and swat at the air, cleaning and tidying just never occurred to me as possible uses of my time.

Four years of that, and I find myself an amateur trash collector. It snuck up on me.

But I won't let that happen again - I have a new rule. It was inspired by the pulse of glee I felt each time I schlepped a heavy trash bag to the dumpster. (Whee! My house is losing weight!) The rule is: one thing in, one thing out.

"Oh, yeah, good luck," my mom says when I lay down my rule. "Just don't be like your father, and throw things out before you notice what they are."

"No, I'm not talking about an all-out dumping spree," I say. "It'll be more of a thoughtful exchange. Like, I buy a new book, I give away an old shirt."

"God, you'll be naked in weeks."

I explain about balance - how this is a new buzzword in my life, how I'm going to use the Scale of Stuff to determine the Quotient of Need minus the Weight of Want, or some loopy babble like that. The point is that I will have to move again someday. When that happens, I don't want to uncover archaeological detritus suggesting that, of all the personalities warring for my head, Pigpen is winning.

"Well, this place certainly has a lot of potential," says Mom. "I hope you do keep it neat." She pauses, considering the walls. "You know, I think this shade of green came out better than we expected."

"Yeah, me too," I say. "It's light, but not pale."

"And bright, but not neon."

"Kind of a spring-y green."

"That was the idea."