Nothing changes, in so many ways. The neighbors are still grinding away at their walls, even though the government announced a halt on all renovations. I have grown more sensitive to loud noises over the past few years, and I understand other people are experiencing the same. There are the people sheltered in their homes and there are people that wander the streets and there is nothing in-between. How easy it is to say "I've got mine" and sleep well at night, and how hard it is to take the high road, to do the right thing, to behave, to curtail, to suffer quietly and feel like anything but a fool? There are mice and there are cats in this world. It would be naive to add "and we all have to get along". The cat does care about the mouse and the mouse does not care about the cheese.
I witness the scripts more clearly now, as the artifice of daily life gets dragged along the side of the road. It is Easter here and there is a traditional cake on the table, a kulich. It tastes heavy and of lemon, not the usual fluff and cardamon. Is it Easter if no one can enter a church? It seems yes, and somehow Valentine's Day feels like it is not the only manufactured holiday. Is it Thanksgiving if there is no turkey on the table, no big game, no familiar faces? The human mind can rationalize anything, and say it is what we want it to be. So yes, it is Easter or Passover, it is Friday, it is Monday, it is Spring, it is breakfast time, it is all going to be ok and this will all be over soon. I stare out the kitchen windows as tiny bits of hail dance against the cold glass, the same as yesterday and the day before. Living here for this long has made me suspicuous of everything, even the seasons. Spring - yah, right.
The neighbors are in denial, not just of the rules but of the entire world. Maybe this is how they cope, by acting like the selfish blowhards they have always been. I can hear them though the pipes in the bathroom, spouting the most vile insults on their children that gallop from room to room like so many buffalo. I cannot imagine what they have been building for years, or what they have been taking apart. It is not the Sistine Chapel up there, it is a low-ceilinged shitty old cluster of rooms with bad wiring and leaky pipes.
Nothing will change that, no matter how long they take a hammer to it.
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