Little Homes

Little homes can be troubling when the people living in it are big physically and verbally. This is especially the case when one member is an artist and writer, one member likes to watch silly television shows on full blast, one member enjoys the smell of cleaning products, and one member, well, the last member never really is a problem.

The first member, myself. I never have any room to place any artworks. My easels are stashed at the back somewhere, far from my reach, and a canvas the size of a pencilcase is always too much to place anywhere - dare I place it somewhere? Not really, for then I run the risk of losing it forever. And writing, oh dear, I need complete silence in order to do so. You can imagine that because of certain household members, I never really obtain any form of decent silence, nor privacy, so my thoughts constantly roll in my mind, yearning for a peaceful time to let themselves out onto a piece of paper. They promise me fortune and fame, and I reply, one day. 

The second member, my father, who blares Arabic television shows the entire time that he is not working, and blasts the radio the entire time he is working, and blasts his snoring when he is doing neither, which leaves me no serenity despite where I sit and despite all of the doors I close. There simply is no escape. Had I a sound-proof room, I still would have to put up with the crap he listens to. Not to mention 'the footy show'. I am not even going to bother capitalising any part of its name because the show is that pathetic, it is lucky it gets a mere mention in one of my posts. Barbaric old Australian men giggling about nonsense, to an audience who giggles back and my father who giggles louder. Then the applause, for no apparent reason most of the time. And I have to put up with all of this despite my utter hatred of football. It is either this, or Arabs. My God.

The third, my mother, who like a fairy with a bottle of bleach, waves nasty chemicals all over the kitchen which is embedded in the lounge room, sprinkling over all hopes of ever drinking a fresh cup of water without getting chemically poisoned. That is not to say that I always drink water all day, but once the sink is sprinkled, the wretched smell shifts from the sink and stains the entire house, depleting all hopes of ever being able to healthily breathe anymore. This is problematic because I always run away from whatever I am doing, gagging for any source of fresh air.

Which leads me to another problem, that fact that I live next door to an Indian Restaurant. We now have mice running around in our garage thanks to the garbage deposit they have placed on the land between our shop and their restaurant, and the smells, I cannot describe the smells we encounter other than they range from vomit to charred socks. I stare in awe at the flocks of customers they have walking in hungry and out full, and I wonder if they make it to the next day without dying from food poisoning. 

And the shop, let me not forget the fact that we live behind a shop with a customer as loud as a jackhammer, and another customer as smelly as a passing garbage truck, and other customers who are visitors of the medical clinic next door, who enjoy dropping off at our shop whatever they are infected with, right before they make their way to their appointments. It is a splendid experience, my reader, having to experience this. Living in a convenience store, where one must promise always convenience. Just yesterday I had my body almost decapitated by an arrogant man wearing headphones who thought the door must have been made out of an oak tree, slamming it hard enough to behead Anne Boleyn. Surely, I told him off, yelling Oh wow, I am lucky I wasn't behind that door, otherwise I'd have been killed! And today, he opened it ever so silently. So I guess this convenience thing is not all that bad.

But all these factors, my dear reader, do contribute to my inability to write a novel. One day, most of these factors will be eliminated and I will have the peace that I deserve.

The Animosity of Bookshops

Bookshops to me are like a large, new forest to a dog desperate to pee, with trees not urinated on by any other animal just yet - so many territories to mark, and the forest is its oyster. In that same sense, despite having been touched and picked up and put back by so many strangers, my mind deviates from the fingerprints located on the covers and focuses on the subject at hand: books. Books, everywhere.

And today, I stumbled upon one of these bookshops. It was not much of a stumble, mind you, because today marked the day of my first lecture as an Education student in her third year, and in that lecture it was as though I fell asleep and dreamt that the lecturer asked of us to purchase four novels - only I was awake, well and truly awake and it really happened. I instantly thought of the two hundred dollars I had in my bank account and how I would happily spend them on class texts and class texts alone, alas the minute I set foot in the bookstore, which is not out of the ordinary as I am always buying class readers, I sensed something was different. Something quite large had differed from my last visit here. There was a change in the layout of the books located within the store, and more importantly, a larger variety.

And when I say large, I truly mean large. I am emphasising the largeness of the variety I was faced with - take your idea of 'large' and expand it thrice its size, and that is indeed the variety I was faced with today. When I say variety, I mean different objects for different purposes all encompassing my very interests - graphic novels, comic books the size of novels, decorative art journals, decorative writing journals, decomposition books, assortments of pens and pacers and other stationery, fiction books, non-fiction books, everything and anything in the literary sphere that aroused my interest was there. I could not think. I stood there, overpowered by these inanimate objects, all of which screamed "buy me!"

With all my excitement somewhat contained after having spent my first five minutes in there with my mouth wide open with amusement and awe, I headed to the shelves where my class texts were located. They had over-stocked them this time, and there was no need to viciously attack someone in order to take their book which was rightfully mine in the first place even though they had been in the bookshop longer than I have and had had full ownership rights of the book that I now held: I do not do this anyway, but when the time comes that books become scarce because of the amount of ebooks and the continuous transformation of technology, I will do all that I can to ensure that books that I want will be acquired by me, by all means both necessary and unnecessary.

The line itself to legally own the books I held was like an immobile stampede. I stood there, struggling to carry the weight of the compiled papers in my hands. I felt as though I were a vulture too full to finish off the rest of the deer that a cheetah left me. Too neglectful to abandon the deer, I soldier on. I was inspired by the continuity of the others who took part of this financially educational stampede, and took pride that I was further ahead in the line than most, having to cramp myself against a bookshelf rather than another spontaneous sweaty human. 

The books now await the scanning of my eyes. I shall pounce onto each page like a hungry lion, seeking to kill the readings and take from them my serve of nutrients, which will enrich my mind. I still adore bookshops, despite the animosity of being in one.