in Damian's class this morning someone asked me how you know which tense to use and now I want to know too
Drake - Weston Road Flows
"Some things have been made easy for you, and some are easier / than they seem."
Hello:
I saw everything from a distance. A guy riding his bike no-hands down the street in front of our house in a Rush t-shirt with ripped sleeves and a look of pure bliss on his face. A woman crying into her mask while walking a dog that looked exactly like a footstool. Lilacs in the neighbours' front yards. Layne in her backyard with her hair tied up in a silk scarf and Layla in her lap. My grandmother in my mother's garden, breathing outdoor air for the second time in however many weeks. Graham and Sophia in plastic chairs in the tall grass, sharing a tall can of Tiger beer. I planted the tomatoes they gave us and watched the cat go as far as the leash would let him, fucking up the marigolds.
While everyone else was doing their after-dinner stuff I was outside in the garden doing that thing where you sit sideways in the hammock and kind of use it as a reclining chair. It was so beautiful I wasn't even afraid of the rats or the raccoons. I wait all year for that feeling where you can't discern any difference between the temperature of the air and the temperature of your skin, when finally you get to be continuous with the city. I stared at the sky and tried to count the colours: pink and coral and yellow and white, metal grey, slate blue, light blue, etc. It is astounding that summer comes every single year, and that it changes the machine of me so easily. I thought about all the things I missed for a while, letting myself count them like beads, but after a while they dissolved too and then I just kept sitting there, just kinda swinging back and forth. I had an idea for a poem that was not very good or really funny at all but that made me laugh. I thought about how sometimes you have to take a few things out of the story to tell the story better, clearer, make it more about what you're omitting. I could hear the sound of someone taking a shower through an open window above me and even that was lush and chiming, like the sound of someone you love walking through a bead curtain to get closer to you, looped over and over. I stared for a long time at one spot in the sky and then eventually, right when I thought I was ready to go inside, I saw the moon. Nothing special about it, just the moon.
Something longer to listen to:
Lydia Davis - Shaping Messy Material
"Another thing I would say is to be very patient, and even patient with chaos. You know, you have this beginning and that beginning and that beginning and you're just worried and unhappy. But I wouldn't worry too much. I think it is a little chaotic. It's not neat."
Pets, interiors:
(The instagram has been a little neglected lately but right now as we head into real summer I am particularly interested in your HOT PETS. What weird positions do your pets flop around in when they are too warm? DM them to @apartment_poem on instagram or email them to apartmentpoem@gmail.com if you like that better.)
Roommates:
(Submit petty gripes about the people you share space with anonymously to apartmentpoem@gmail.com)
My roommate does this thing where he'll look at his phone and do a big loud gasp or start laughing really loudly and conspicuously, clearly expecting you to be like "WHAT IS IT??" but he does it like 800000 times per day and sometimes I have my headphones in and then I have to take them out to be like ".....what is it" and it's never even anything funny or cool! I'M SICK OF IT
Dreams:
(Submit dreams anonymously to apartmentpoem@gmail.com)
I write my dreams down in my Notes app every morning so there are a lot but this one was recent and felt more meaningful than the ones that are just like "I was on a zoom call" or hanging out with people from high school I didn't actually know: dreamt I met a guy under the highway (I-5 in Seattle?) and he was preparing to do something brave and difficult. I asked, how can you do this? and he said, my ten children have been saved 1500 times, I can save 15000 children once.
&&&:
Carlo's basketball corner:
Julius Erving (Dr J) RARE Streetball Footage | 1975 Bill Robinson Playground, Harlem