Tag Archives: movement

I thought I saw something

You ever get that feeling like you just saw something out of the corner of your eye, but you’re not sure if it was real or imaginary? I was just sitting at my desk when I swore I noticed some sort of movement, just right at the edge of my peripheral vision. I looked, and there was nothing. But what was it that I thought I saw? Was it real? I have no idea. I don’t want to say it could’ve been a bug, because to verbalize it might make it come true. So I kind of do a quick check behind the desk, alongside the wall. There’s nothing out of the ordinary.

blrrr

It’s tough because there’s no reliable track record for this type of activity. I can’t go back and judge this experience based off of past encounters with roaches or spiders. It’s like, every once in a while, I’ll think I see something, and then a minute passes, maybe another minute and, yep, it’s a bug, it’s a roach and it’s running across the floor.

But then other times it’s all in my head. Like when I was a little kid and I still believed in Santa Claus, every now and then I’d swear I caught a flash of red out of the corner of my eye. So I don’t know what to believe. I do know that if I’m not careful, I’ll let my imagination get the best of me. If I too actively seek out every shadow or imaginary movement I think I see, it’s only going to increase the frequency at which I’m seeing these phantom blurs.

But I also know that I live in New York, that maybe half the time I catch myself looking behind the dresser or underneath that stack of plates, it’s because I actually did see something. And sitting back and ignoring it, pretending like I never saw it in the first place, it never solves the problem. Best case scenario, it just comes back out a minute or two later, and now I’ve definitely seen it, now I have to take action and kill it. Worst case, it disappears into the cracks and crevasses of my walls and flooring where it’ll spawn an entire generation of creepy-crawlies.

I hope I’m not giving the impression that I’m living in a bug-infested dump. My place is very clean. But I’d say once or twice a year I’ve got to kill a roach, usually a really big one that’s either trying to find a warm place, or that’s trying to get back outside now that the weather is nice. I definitely see bugs all the time outside. And mice. And rats. Luckily my block is overrun with feral cats, and so yeah, I’d much rather stray cat colonies to rats.

Several years ago I was living at this apartment by my school in the Bronx. That was the first time that I had an actual mouse try to move in. Those little guys are fast, much faster than any bug. And so that feeling of seeing something moving in the corner, once you actually get a mouse cohabitating with you, it becomes way more pronounced. You’ll see that blur of darkness every time you enter a room. And the worst part is, once out of every twenty or so times, you’ll actually see it, like for real, a real mouse.

Then you have to lay out traps, and worry that the peanut butter is going to attract bugs. And then you finally catch the mouse and you have to wipe up all of the guts and everything that explode all over the place when the mouse finally takes the bait. Like I said, I’ve been really lucky that the worst I’ve had to deal with here is the occasional roach.

And a silverfish every now and then. I don’t know why, but silverfish don’t gross me out as much. For some reason they always kind of blend in with the floor, and so maybe it’s just like an optical illusion, but I never see any imaginary silverfish.

OK, I just saw it again, the movement, something creeping around. I’m still not convinced that it’s anything real, because I’ve just spent the better part of a half an hour talking about roaches and mice. If anything, I’d be more concerned if by this point I hadn’t concocted some hallucinatory pests. But still, I’m having a hard time suppressing my urge to start stomping on the floor, kicking piles of stuff. If it’s hiding in there, I want to see it. I don’t really want to see it. I hate when it comes true, when it pops out from one hiding spot and immediately dives into another. I just … I just wish I had X-Ray vision, that I could see any bugs in the walls of under the floors. No, that would be a terrible super power. A curse really. I just want the phantom movements to stop.

A word to the protesters in the Ukraine and Venezuela

Listen, I get it, OK, what you guys are doing over there is really important, right, and we’re all behind you here, one hundred percent, OK, I myself have witnessed several behind the scenes photos posted to reddit’s front page detailing exactly what’s going on over there in Kiev. Congrats on taking the presidential mansion, dude, that’s a huge accomplishment. Because it’s a fight out there, OK, and it’s a tough fight, so stick to your guns, and know that we stand with you over here in America.

prokraine

But having said all of that, and I don’t want to sound like too much of a dick here, but your protest movement is nothing compared to what we’re living under on a daily basis over here. You think Ukraine riot police are bad? Try having your own government constantly spying on you. I’m not even kidding, my buddies and I took the 4 train to an Occupy event two years ago and there were like cops on every single car. And those were just the uniformed officers. Who knows how many bodies they’ve got watching us? Reading our emails? Retweeting our tweets back to the government?

Which is why what we’re doing over here is so much more nuanced and complicated – and ultimately more important – than what you guys are dealing with over there. Think about it. The Ukraine. Russia. The former Soviet Union. You guys have been dealing with overtly totalitarian regimes for ages. Now you’ve got a bunch of students holding a sit-in near your version of Tahrir Square. That’s cool, and again, stand strong brothers. But also again, that’s nothing compared to what we’re dealing with.

At least you’ve got an enemy to protest against. You’ve got the police. There’s the riot gear. Let’s protest. Let’s take over this mansion. That’s too easy. You know what we’ve got to do? We have to congregate at random spots downtown, right, and then the cops have like seventy-five percent of the street blocked off, so there’s not really a lot of room, and the hot dog guys are always on the other side of the barricades, so if you want a Gatorade, yeah, the cops will let you out to buy one, but they won’t let you back in. It’s fascism over here. But a subtle fascism.

Yeah, it’s so easy for all of you, in Kiev, in Venezuela, don’t think I’m forgetting about Venezuela, again, I’m very up-to-date in regards to everything that’s going on, you know, all of the stuff that the big media doesn’t want me to see. I’m seeing it all, right here on the Internet. And I’m telling you, you guys are like an Occupy farm team. Which isn’t bad, OK, I’m just saying, you guys are all like, “We’re on the front lines of the revolution!” and I’m like, we are the revolution, man. OK?

We’re like the birthplace of freedom, of democracy. Whereas you guys are getting your first taste of independence, we’re taking it back, right, we’re drawing a line in the sand. What happens here echoes through eternity, and I would argue that the protests in Ukraine, in Colombia, Latvia, right, you guys are all like field experiments. But over here there are real issues with serious consequences.

And what’s with all of the brute force? I was down at Zuccotti one day and this roving troupe of street dancers put on a quasi-experimental movement piece about violence and thuggery, the heavy hand of the state cracking down on the yearning voices of its citizens. It was powerful. Unfortunately the very nature of the piece prevents me from really giving a detailed description of what it was like, or the emotions it evoked in nearly everyone in attendance, including some police, I’m pretty sure I saw one cop tearing up. At least, I think it was a cop. It could have been a protester dressed like a cop, you know, making a statement. Or it could have been an undercover cop dressed like a protester dressed like a cop. You see? This is what we’re dealing with over here. Nothing is simple. Nothing is black and white. Not like in the Ukraine, where it’s easy, or in Caracas, where it’s even easier, good and bad, right and wrong. Over here, you just get lost in the maze, OK, and I’m talking both literally and figuratively, right, the figurative maze that is this ethical quagmire, and also the literal maze, the one that I was talking about before, with the police barricades and hot dog guys.

I’m just saying.