music: Mississippi John Hurt- Frankie and Albert
Today was Sunday, the Great American Day Of Rest. And (for once) rest I did. Slept in until 10:00 am, a great long time nowadays. Had some food, played some guitar (first time in weeks), did some reading for class, did some reading not for class, took a mid afternoon nap, had a stroll around the neighborhood, and came back home to start work for tomorrow. A rewrite of a paper from last semester, An analysis of student work for my program portfolio, and planning for this week’s lessons. Some time was squandered today and I probably could have gotten a lot more done than I did, but I needed to squander some time on doing nothing.
Doing nothing is a strange thing for me these days now that I have been conditioned to maximize productivity and output every waking minute. It was a good exercise in pausing and looking around, in not charging ahead, in not pushing foward. I felt bad about it. Guilty almost. Shouldn’t there be something to show for my time spent piddling about today? By all quantitative measures and by all grad school east-coast scales, today was a waste. Fine. I’m willing to live with that for today, guilt and all. It was nice to lounge around doing not much of anything for most of the day. The one downside was that I did it at home, which is quite a terrible place.
They say you’ll never forget the roommates you had in college. I assuredly won’t forget them, nor will I forget the roommates I had in grad school. But for completely different reasons. Although I don’t talk with them much, I count the roommates I had in college among my friends. People I like to spend time with, people I’d invite to my wedding, that sort of thing. My roommates in grad school are another story altogether.
I came upon this apartment just blocks away from Harvard Yard through craigslist in the spring of 2003. Craigslist had never let me down; I bought guitar pedals and found people to play music with on the weekends. I had the utmost faith that it would find me a nice apartment as well. And the apartment itself, the physical plant, is beautiful by apartement building’s standards. The four people who occupy the space with me leave much to be desired. It makes coming home a very unpleasant experience.
Of the four other members of the apartment, two maintain existences worthy of clinical attention. The other two live more benign yet equally quirky lives. They give me fodder for stories that will make your skin crawl. I think I’ll hold off on the stories here until after I’m out of this place, in case the walls have ears and eyes (one roommate has admitted to prolonged “spying” on neighbors). The short of it is this: having to live with these people puts me in a foul mood. There is stuff that enrages me, and there is stuff that depresses me. Things are quite sad around here most of the time actually; there is very little evidence that any of my roommates has any friends or much of a social life at all, save one roommate’s husband (living in Africa) and another roommate’s girlfriend (in town every 3 months or so). I get the sense that people come directly home from work and retreat to their locked rooms to watch TV. I don’t think any of them ever are out of the house on weekends. If I didn’t resent spending time here so much, I might begin to feel sorry for them.
Luckily, this is not the year where home is something I think about. I’ve been so busy that it’s almost a blessing to not have to worry about investing anything of myself on the homefront. Still, on the few times that I do spend a significant amount of time here, on those Sunday afternoons that I end up lazing about the house, I would like to have an environment that is even the slightest bit pleasant. Today, though, spending time alone in my room was exactly what I was hoping to do. I could shut my door and forget that my roommates were home, except for hearing their tiptoeing around. Fine.
Perhaps this is the year of the strange roommate. I have mine, and my associate to the West has his own bizzare stories from his old home place. Fine. Not everyone can live in Chowdahaus all the time. But having a terrible living situation, living with people who enrage and depress you at the same time, does not make for pleasant lazy Sundays. At least I don’t feel so bad about staying late at school to grade papers…
Posted by davidtaus at March 14, 2004 11:18 PM