OH, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNING

Yesterday morning started out really early. I mean really early like 4:30am, when my neighbors pulled their car in behind the building and woke me up. I was expecting it because they'd told me they were going to and they had to leave for the airport at 5am so I wasn't unduly annoyed. However, when the radio alarm clock in the garage apartment next door, that sits catty-corner to my bedroom at the back of my apartment, started to go off at 7am, and continued it's steady beeping for an HOUR, I got really annoyed.

The guy who lives there was either not home or so drunk that he wasn't hearing it. I tend to think he was drunk since he's been waking me up by throwing up in the bushes outside his front door when he gets in at 2am - ever since I moved in. So on Sunday morning I was feeling way resentful that his alcoholism was affecting my ability to sleep.

And then over the sound of the beeping I became aware of wailing and sobbing floating down from the apartment upstairs. I knew that earlier in the week, R. had told T. that he was seeing someone else and it was serious and she needed to move on. And I knew that she had gone into his bedroom - they haven't slept together in five years - and destroyed it. But I only knew that by word of mouth.

As I listened to the sobbing and wailing, over the beeping alarm, at 7:30 yesterday morning I found myself wondering about these people and their lives. These are middle aged people whose lives pretty much suck. I mean, yeah, I'm annoyed that the vomiting neighbor's alarm is going off and it does so all the time, come to think of it, but it really sucks that he's so out of it that he doesn't even hear it! That he could choke on his own vomit and die alone in that little apartment over the garage and no one would know because he doesn't seem to have any friends.

And the lady upstairs, the speed freak, mad vacuumer, who is rude and loud and who, over the last five years I've watched lose her job, her car and put on 40 pounds - well she's also got no friends and she's been living up there with a man whom she screams at and who is a really good man who doesn't deserve that treatment. And now he's moved on and she's got to move out of her home. The place where she indulges in her self-destructive behavior and hides from the world, festering in her anger. I wonder if she's crying because R. loves someone else? Or is she crying because she has to leave and as far as I can tell she's got no where to go and no money to go there? I mean I think she can go to her mom's up in Oregon, but I don't think her mom even wants her? I feel for her - but I want her gone so bad I'm almost crying myself.

She sobs and wails and moans and screams until 11am. I can't make out much of what she's saying beyond, "I hate him", and I can only imagine what the inside of the house looks like. I'm very glad that he's removed all the guns from their house.

When it finally gets quiet I wonder if she's finally cried it out and gone to sleep, or if she's killed herself?

I hope that R. will start to play the piano again and wonder if he'll let me do a sage cleansing when she's finally gone?