« January 20, 2005 | Main | January 24, 2005 »

January 23, 2005

ISO

You go to the place where you always keep whatever it is you are looking for now--wallet? license? pair of glasses? Set of keys.--and as you stand there it dawns on you that you don't quite remember the last time you saw it. Was it last night when you got home?--almost-but-not-quite drunk, sober enough to drive of course but not quite sober enough to have a clear memory of what happened after you opened the front door...

Your mind says "I put it where I always do" but your body says "I don't remember." And without the physical memory suddenly everything is much more fuzzy than it was a few minutes ago. Was it even you, in fact, who unlocked the front door? You stand in the livingroom, trying to recreate last night. First the drinks, then the drive home, then the apartment, then--? Then you're standing here now, 12 hours later, empty handed and irritated. "Where the fuck did I..."

Your body is starting to remember the weight of the keys in your hand, their rattle as the front door opened--but it's not giving you any useful information after that. Oh, you couldn't have, you wouldn't just ... leave them in the front door... would you? Your race from the car to the apartment building, from that door up the stairs to the front door of your apartment, its warmth when you opened the door, making you dizzy, a little bit...

You know it's pointless but you open the front door and look anyway. You close the door again and sigh, knowing your day just started a downward trend. Lost, goddammit. You know the keys are gone but that doesn't mean you won't tear the place apart looking for them. And while you open drawers and move magazines and lift pillows, resigned but hopeful against your will, you realize that you just might have given somebody you don't know access to everything you have.

Somebody you don't know might be able to come into your home or open your car door as if it were his home or his car. Come on in, look around, turn on the tv--hell, take the tv--go for a drive. Put your tv into your car, get right into the front seat, start the engine with your--lost--keys and go for a drive!

That's what happens when you're careless, I guess. You look away just for a minute; you forget to double-check; you remember doing the same thing so many times that remembering becomes doing, but it isn't. And now somebody else has just as much a right as you do to put his hands on what's yours. He might not be a bad guy; he might be okay in fact, just a little confused about the concept of ownership--he probably didn't even start out wanting to take your tv, but you invited him in and gave him the opportunity while you were distracted by habit.

You'll get new keys made on Monday morning and you'll park your car someplace else for a while until you can feel that it's safe again to go back to your routine, but every time you see someone in the hall or hear somebody on the stairs or nod at a guy you don't recognize in the parking lot you'll wonder "is it you?" And nothing will feel like yours for a long while.

Posted by JudyLa at 09:47 AM | Comments (0)