Sagas of “The New Neighbor”

It’s the first day of class and I’m up early to set the pulse of my first semester of California State College. I wake to another floor only this time it’s carpet and I’ve paid to call it mine. Everything I own is taped up inside boxes that once shipped prescription bottles, not the drugs themselves, the little tan plastic containers with lock tight tops. These boxes are stacked in various parts of my apartment based on weight.

The heavy ones are stacked where I imagine a bookshelf will be the day I can find one on the side of the road. The lighter ones are in the kitchen, and all the duffle bags, panniers, and stuff sacks are piled in the closet.

It’s not that I didn’t label them; no- I did a very fine job of that. The problem is that I got too creative with my labels and wrote things like “kitten” on the box of old notebooks and “drug lab materials” on the crate with my crock-pot.

I try to run a routine that once helped me feel human in a right-angled environment. I figure it will help eventually, like flexing a bicep in obesity, one step at a time- I will acclimate.

I try to turn the rusty wheels of my morning meditation. With all the traditional specs of spiritual materialism packed away, I grab a utility flashlight to help woo my awareness into calm abiding. I once worked with a guy at a Dharma center who felt like that’s all meditation was, just an elaborate act to romance your self into relaxation. I can’t disagree, but without the incense, tankas, offering bowls, and silk brocades; and only a single utility flashlight propped against the retro wood paneled wall- I decided I am a cheap meglo-romantic softly vanquishing the roots of my self-clinging. Covered in dust as my Dharma may be, the sit goes smoothly. A mosquito drinks her breakfast from my knee and I remember how it is to observe the rise and fall.

Afterward, I’m wondering how I moved all these boxes into my house and now I can’t find a single spoon. My oat cereal is marinating in the backcountry coffee press. I can't find a single bowl. Apparently I didn’t pack it in the box labeled “In case of fire, rescue me first” or any of the three named after South American authors.

I start scrambling around my house for anything that my double as a scooping utensil. I search my school supplies, my tool box (there must be something in a toolbox right), I wonder if I could just carve a utensil out of the abundant cardboard. Meanwhile, the soggy set sets in.

I end up sitting in on my living room carpet in the filtering dawn light, sipping my oats from the lip of the coffee press. Day one my junior year has begun.