Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

college

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It’s the same old house to me, really, no matter what. I’ve only been here for a little over half a year, but even the slopey ceilings and bare brick walls started losing their effect on me a while ago, and now nothing about it is thrilling. I suppose it’s hard for thrill and comfort to cohabitate in one place for too long, and now it’s just become ‘home’ rather than anything else. It’s a place for me to be weary, and to watch teevee, and to cook dinner. But, this morning we were all in the kitchen having waffles, ice cream, or both, and Elise looked to her left and said “it’s colorful.”


Following her gaze my first thought was that she was just looking out the window at the siding of the house next to us, which is just about anything but colorful — no matter how sunny it might be on the outside. But, it wasn’t the window she was staring at, but its sill. Our kitchen windowsill has become our makeshift house wetbar, and even at its current low tide it’s a cross-sectioned rainbow of apple green Pucker, the deep blue bottles of Skyy and irish cream, and the too clear Smirnoff letting the sun fall right through it.

“Colorful?” I pondered it more than i asked it. I suppose even the most routine of comfortable things are still thrilling in the right light.


A half hour later Kat was framing up a picture of the shadows that our blinds cast against the curtains, with Elise coaching on what to leave out of the edge, and inside it felt like we had rewound back past spring to last summer, and the wonder i had in my eyes at this place when it was empty and unfinished.


I am enjoying all of the seasons i have collected, as much as i am enjoying the spring that has now officially arrived.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/03/75028150/

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I am surprised when i do anything well.

I just got back from my voice jury … my hands did not tremble, i did not quake. I smiled. I sang the easier of my two songs first, letting my voice fall into the slack of the piano accompaniment — getting all of the unsureness out of my system. Better to be unsure on the easy one and powerful on the harder. And, so, without much ado, i was.

I am not perfect — it’s something that i’ve come to terms with over the years. But, sometimes i do things right, and when i do those things i am perfect for one barely measurable moment, and i am living from one of those moments to the next right now.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/03/75010270/

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Sorry, i’ve been having a life.

My view has varied throughout my life, as i never can see the same thing out of my bedroom windows from place to place. As a child it was just the desolation of SouthWest Philadelphia with a hint of the city skyline buried off in the distance, and then it was a calm schoolyard with its swings and endless ranks of row-homes beyond. It was a shock to go from such typical views to Freshmen year, where i could see a postcard version of our entire city skyline from the window above my bed.


Kenny and i had an ongoing joke that year about how i would invite girls up to the room and ask them if they wanted to “see the view.” Of course, they’d have to climb right onto my bed to see what i meant, which played right into my plan of seduction via the illumination of the city lights.

No one ever took me up on the offer of the view, but it might have been because i never really offered it seriously; always packaging it with the joke that it was, in fact, my surefire means of seduction — which tends to diffuse the seductive power of the plan.


Right now it is raining. My neighbor has his blinds closed, so all there is to see is the oblong diamond overlay of his mottled brown siding, and the strange rust-orange of the next house with cabinets backed up against its windows so that all i can see is what’s on top of them. Stricly speaking, it’s the most restricted view i’ve ever had … even last year’s view of rowhomes sometimes came through with something a little more noteworthy. So, my window isn’t much to be proud of . . . except, between here and those houses on the other side, there is a tiny backyard world that is separate from the people in the houses that surround it. Staring out into it is like watching the interior of a snow-globe, only it is the outside and we are the in, and we are staring out at it through the protection of my tiny back window.

Right now it is raining, and the patter-splash-patter of it on the world below my window is easy to pick out from the street sounds and the sighing of my heater. On Monday all that was out there was sun, and in the afternoon it had reached its zenith and was headed home to sleep as its light was projected down through that tiny window.

My bed was magnified; all warmth and comfort. And, i’m thinking… it might not be the most impressive view that i’ve ever had, but it could be my favourite.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/03/75009809/

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So, i try not to be too judgmental in my voyeuristic exploits; after all, it isn’t really my place to have an opinion about what my neighbor does in his own bedroom — seeing as it’s not my place to be staring at him to begin with. Honestly, i feel a little lax in my creepy-neighbor duties, since he’s taken to leaving his blinds open for me to easily stare into lately. Who knows; maybe he finally started being interested in what was happening in my room?


Anyhow, never was there a better reason to listen to obscure cds and stare out of my back window than procrastinating on doing my Public Relations final project, and so here i am wide-eyed and dumbfounded, blasting Save Ferris and wondering why my neighbor decided to open all of his windows and put fans in them on one of the coldest nights so far this year. I mean, if it smells in there or something, he could leave the room while he aerated it.


But, anyway, no judgments … god knows i don’t want to know what he thinks about what goes on in here.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/03/10393948/

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There is someone asleep in my shower.

Actually, he’s not in my shower… he’s more half-in my shower, with his legs splayed out over my seafoam green rug in such a way that i cannot possibly get in to grab my toothbrush and face wash.

Apparently it was a good party.

I’ve never thrown a party before; the small gathering i arranged last month paled in comparison to this one. This, though, was a party … furniture rearranging, obsessive vacuuming, nearly eighty assorted jello shots, fifty dollars just in soda and chips, and two refrigerators full of assorted beer-like substances. I have yet to figure out how many people were here… twenty just from assorted a cappella groups, another ten certified friends of the house, and lots of random non-house friends. A large group of people, to be sure. And, funny things, too. For one, our extra room got turned into a concert hall when i brought all but two of my guitars out to play, and sudden i was being treated to a whole spectrum of songs — from a multiple-MC version of “That Thing” to what amounted to a full-band treatment of “The Only Gay Eskimo.” Recitals of Weezer songs upstairs. Me parading around nearly naked with a pair of underwear on my head.

I didn’t drink a drop.

Right now everything that i spent all day cleaning looks like it was swept over with an alcohol tinged cyclone, and we three roommates have decided to not do a damned thing about it until tomorrow morning when we wake up.

I don’t suppose that our friend in the shower is opposed to the plan.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/03/10324999/