emmy blotnick

This entire week

I’ve been at home, writing in my living room (that sounds poetic, right? Wait for it, it’s not) and early on I realized that nobody at eye level with my apartment has curtains. None of us. We can all see each other throughout the day and it brings up a handful of weird questions: Should you fight the natural human instinct to wave? Do you still dance around if the mood strikes? Do you still, like, pick your nose? Is it okay to lick that plate? What if we ever meet?

From Monday through Thursday, there was an elderly Asian woman in the apartment across the street who stood at her window facing out the entire day, just watching and watching. Pale little somber face. She never moved and I grew incredibly tired of second-guessing all my “home alone” behaviors. Can’t go through life that way; being home alone is too awesome.

So I let my neighbor-guard down. Way down.

On Tuesday I split my favorite pants dancing to “Get Into the Groove” (consider that groove Gotten Into) and it doesn’t matter who you are, if you get to see that from the comfort of your home on a quiet weekday you’re lucky. All day Wednesday I picked my nose so consistently I convinced myself I was pulling a prank on her, that I was going to trick her into thinking time had stopped. Thursday I made a pretty offensive “new take” on nachos that I’m not going to tell you about in any detail, but I definitely licked every last bit of Awful off that plate.

It wasn’t until Friday morning that I put on my glasses for the first time all week and saw that the watchful old Asian woman was actually a large curtain tied in a knot.

I know. I know. But listen, I am deeply glad I did all my stupid shit. I have no regrets besides maybe not putting on my glasses sooner. I want to extrapolate this experience into life philosophy territory and I can already tell it’s going to be a clunker, but let’s try. Here’s the dismount: “Live like the old Asian lady watching you is just a large curtain tied in a knot.”

Whew.