Oz (Or, Dial "D" for "Dial-Up")
The twister has turned and left me here.
Uprooted from the stark, black-and-white existence that was my urban home for 13 months, I’ve landed in a colorful dreamworld. The sun is up, and out. The sky is blue. I’m lying on my queen-sized bed, bathed in light as I write for you.
Long Island has never been, nor will ever again be, so beautiful.
Metaphors and costumed actors aside, I’m on Long Island right now. Out of my apartment (I could say I was evicted, or convicted, but I was neither), I’ve moved out to where cars have space to roam freely and legs have space to stretch (queen-sized beds fit in larger bedrooms).
I’m planning to travel at the end of the month, so instead of paying a lot of money for rent, for an apartment I would have had to rush into getting, that probably wouldn’t be very cool, and also completely wasting 10 days’ of that horrible rate, I said, “Fuck it. Dad, guess who’s coming to dinner.”
(Me.)
I spent some time here after I graduated from undergrad. Back then I called it “detox,” ’cause with my comically enlarged tolerance, I needed a break from plying myself. Then I became an English grad student (ha!).
But like everything else, things change but they stay the same. This time the detox isn’t all beer-related (mostly whiskey now) but actually, media-related. My temporary home is a cable-free zone. That is cable-television- and cable-modem-free.
I’m posting through a frickin’ phone wire. No punchline necessary.
It’s a strange thing to check email once a day. It’s odd not channel surfing. It’s five degrees cooler out here, rent is real cheap and there are many fewer people to see moseying around, but those that I do, I judge and hate so bad. But they’re not out my window, so I generally live and let live.
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. He’s just showering, after going to one of the many nearby beaches. That he drove to. Because it’s summer, and he has a car and a stereo that plays loud music on CDs and not on iPods. He once again feels with all senses, reawakened senses, as he fragments his denial and the lucid illusion that cerebral life in Manhattan is all there is to life.
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