Ideas are exhausting

This how that idea got out of control: the apartment had an absurdly large terrace with a thick concrete wall just above waist height. The concrete was tinted a hue better suited to the American southwest; it was garish in the damp and there was a lot of it. None of the surfaces that coated that place were soft and perhaps that was the point of entry—where the idea came in. The terrace and the apartment had a generous aspect to the east and a coveted outlook to the north: mountains and city skyline. A neighbour directly south introduced himself with a threat: don’t block my view. Points progressed to punctures.

There was a lumber shop at the end of the block so maybe it was the ease of material access; this has happened before. What’s within reach becomes suggestive—consequential—like the mound of old doorknobs Peter dropped in the metal recycling outside the door a lifetime later. They ended up in the metal recycling again but not until they were a major distraction. The lumber distraction was cedar—silver, soft and sweet smelling. A fence or screen it would have been more practical. Why was the idea not for a fence or screen? Why was it instead for a box?

Because. 

Because the terrace was so large.

Some of it needed consuming. Filling. It asked for occupation.

Because.

Because the terrace was so large and all of it was seen. 

There were no places of intimacy. There were no soft corners.

The box was no higher than the terrace wall. It had a frame made from pressure-treated lumber and it sat in the centre. The intention was always that it would have a small door so its vacant core could hide things like garden hoses. The top of the box was clad in soft cedar and had a recessed trough that was filled with native plants that took easily, their changing profile layering delicately onto the view of the neighbour to the south. The vertical faces of the box were also clad in cedar and they were pleasant from every angle. A disruption, yes, but in possession of some purpose. The box held its ground. It made new spaces and yet everyone asked what the box was, what it was doing there. It was exhausting.

Aaron took a lot of the cedar to his studio outside the city. The lengths weren’t useful to anyone building a fence and no one else saw two seasons of weathering as the perfect base for paintings. The rain drew a faint outline of the space where the box stood in the centre of the terrace. The plants that thrived in the recessed trough quickly outgrew it; the survivors were relocated to better accommodations. There were as many questions about where the box went as there were about what it was. Ideas are exhausting. It’s easier to call them art.

Sleep story

We had no mattress when we got there. We left the old one behind in the apartment made of glass. The new owner was hurrying us out. The old mattress needed transport to the dump. I have a van. I’ll do it. My renter wants in. It was lying there on the floor when we pulled the door closed for the last time. Years of sleep or the equivalent.

The small house was unbearably hot when we arrived so it wasn’t so terrible to sleep the floor. We had an air mattress but it was precarious. He leaned in to kiss my forehead and gave me a black eye. We went to the store with the nice mattresses shortly thereafter. This was what I would spend the prize money on: a mattress made of latex that I would have for life. This is what my accomplishments could afford me: sleep at night. Rest for my left hip and his right shoulder. A mattress made of latex with a merino wool cover that resisted dust mites and bedbugs. Protection from calamity, awake and at rest.

I slept beautifully on that mattress. Truly, it was the best I have ever slept, even while waking life escalated daily with absurdity in the name of education. Our bodies sank into it at the end of each day and remained thus, unconscious and undisturbed until we heard cardinal song or commuter traffic. While we worked, it quietly re-established its form, expanding to fill pits born by our heaviest and pointiest parts. It was always remade by evening.

When I was pried from that house in late September, the complimentary mattress bag provided by the movers was insufficient. It was thin, foggy and had obviously been used to hold inferior mattresses. This isn’t good enough I said before driving away and crying in a parking lot. I hope you survive this a neighbour said before waving goodbye. On the other side of the country, at another small house the mattress reappeared as resilient as ever. That bedroom was cold and damp but it proved resistant to this too. It held its form but never the dust, even as I laundered a hundred meters of unbleached cotton. He propelled himself through one bad job and two better and I made soft things for long journeys. We always slept well at night except that Christmas Eve but it wasn’t the mattress’ fault. This is a mattress for life, I told myself. You earned it with your accomplishments. No one can take that away from you.

Of all the things left behind, this is the heaviest burden.

List

-tall priest on bicycle wearing glasses and sport coat in oversized houndstooth print

-woman wearing French worker chemise, bicycling while brushing her hair, ash grey

-couple, looking at each other while bicycling; she cradles a bright yellow cake box in her left arm and doesn’t struggle to keep it level