Structurally Sound

sometimes i stand outside my house and peer in through the windows. if i manage to scramble onto the roof — don't worry, it's safe — i'll look into my bedroom window.

it's a fascinating feeling — being an outsider peering into your own life. the world within the walls doesn't seem real but rather something constructed by soldering imagination, aspiration, and desperation into an image we present to ourselves and anyone else who — rather than looking in — waltzes through the front door.

as a twenty something with no net worth and arguably negative cultural footprint, this peering in feels more real than the alternative. try standing pressed up against the frame. then walk a few feet away. and then perhaps from a distance such that everything looks akin to a dollhouse. i assume it's what one experiences on the cusp of leaving this world itself — a procession of trifles we'd spent a lifetime dignifying.

almost as if… it truly doesn't matter at all. of course, if i stand outside my own room for too long, one might conclude the upper floors are no longer fully tenanted — and i'm forced back inside to maintain the facade of normalcy.