procrastinating thoughts
There’s something really happy-sad about the sound of my below-neighbor playing guitar. The faint muffled chords that mix with their voice and rise through the cracks in my floorboards.
It makes me happy, in the same way that watching people smile into their phones or talk to themselves as they walk or fall asleep slowly on the train makes me smile. Because there’s a quiet joy in just watching humans be humans. Chicago for sure has taught me that.
It makes me sad too though. In the same way that the city always makes me sad. Because it will never really feel like home, never really feel all the way settled, like I’ll always have a box still packed.
My above-neighbors walk like a stampede of horses. A constant drumbeat following the measures of identical hallways, seemingly pacing back and forth in a lilted waltz of sorts. But my downstairs-neighbor plays the guitar. They sing to themselves — and they must realize to me, and to the sleepy dog dozing in my lap (yet another hindrance to the possibility of grading). My garden apartment neighbor will always be just a little too loud, a little too often and in the quiet of 10:34 on a Friday night, I don’t mind.
