Friday, July 28, 2006

something i will miss about my apartment on neville street (things which might be impossible to call right now, with little distance, as the things i miss about mckee place were things i hated or was indifferent to when i lived there):
an across-the-street neighbor plays the saxophone, usually in the late afternoon. he's not any good; i never realized how difficult it must be to master this instrument until the warm months of this year. he usually plays scales, the notes separated, not smooth. i never figured out the musician and i don't know why i attribute them with a masculine pronoun. i'll miss laying on the couch, or sitting on the back porch, listening to him practice for hours in the afternoon. this is a phenomenon that doesn't occur where i grew up, where houses are too far apart for the neighbor's noise to drift in. the only time i can remember was driving past the house at the bottom of penn adamsburg road -- an old man lived there, played the organ all the time. that is one of the things i love about the city; even in an empty apartment, you can feel the presence of people living in houses not spaced out by green and miles of back roads.

i ran into my friend brandon at bootleggers wednesday night, haven't seen him in months, maybe a year. he used to hang out when we lived at mckee. he told me he'd just been thinking about that year, how he had such a good time and it may have been one of his favorite years ever. it seemed like all we ever did was play beer pong in our living room, considering whether or not to skip piano class on thursday morning. we drank american light, we pissed amber off, we woke up to the smell of leftover beer and cans strewn across the living room and kitchen.

someone in those houses around mckee-louisa-meyran played the bagpipes: my favorite thing about mckee place. i just bought a typewriter on ebay, a smith-corona silent from the 40s. i hope its loud; i can make up for never becoming good at the guitar by filling south bouquet street with the click-clack of typewriter keys.