Stranded on an island

Sometimes I feel like I'm stranded on an island. A desert island, to be precise, since it's August and the mercury rises past ninety every day while the humidity continues to oppress anything that dares to move. My apartment is a tiny little rabbit hole, half underground--the view outside my living room window allows me to see the bare side of a bush that keeps its leaves all year round. Between me and that bush is twelve square feet of dirt and mulch, crawling with insects that look like they escaped the set of a horror movie.

I'm working only twenty hours a week, so there are many days when I'm in the apartment all by myself in the mornings and afternoons. With my trademark lack of a significant attention span and my hypocritcal aversion to housework (I can talk a good game, but damn if I ever feel determined enough to do anything about the piles of crap suffocating me), I feel the need to escape. But where can I go?

I live in the city. Granted, not THE city--that's a few miles to the north. I'm also not technically in the suburbs--though the buildings that comprise my apartment complex all look pretty much alike, there's a fair amount of grass and hundreds of trees to prevent the place from looking like the back cover of a Desaparecidos record. There's stuff around here, I'm told--monuments and museums and history and heritage and big green open spaces that contrast with modernity and urbanity in a most pleasing manner. It's over across the river, at least most of it. If I decide to go, I go alone (mildly depressing), and if I drive there's no guarantee I'll find a place to park. If I take public transit, the time it takes to get to these places quadruples (double time there and back). Should I stay long enough to meet Debbie? Can I make that work? Will she be mad that I don't have the car?

So, going into the city is out. So close, yet, cruelly, hours away. Maybe there's something closer that'll suit my desires. I live on a side street that motorists use to cut between two more well-traveled roads--during morning and evening rushes the street is full of vehicles carrying exactly one passenger to the destination that awaits them--home, school, work. But what's around here, really? A dilapidated park. Rows of ugly townhouses that no doubt cost the marginally attractive twentysomething couples who live there a cool three-quarters of a million. A strip mall under construction that boasts little more than a Rite Aid and a Subway. The only item of promise is the library, a mile away on foot (I refuse to drive), but you can't blame me for being a little burned out on those types of places.

Is trying to find something around here worth the trouble? Will I go somewhere that requires me to shower and put on decent clothes? Because the highly-touted salubrious effects of showering seem to melt in the August sun the minute I open the door to my building. Why the hell do I sweat so much? I guess I could go to the pool right next to my building, but that's no fun by myself.

Is there anything on TV? Nope. Is there anything online I could dig up to interest me? Probably, yet the prospect of doing so is depressing--and yet, I still find myself doing it.

Why have I lost my attention span? It makes reading so difficult--I can barely read anymore. I never really was much of a reader--sure, I was an English major, but discussion of themes and theory always excited me far more than simple narratives. I have a stack of books here I've never touched, as well as a stack of films my lowly ass should get around to seeing (again, a depressing idea, to watch movies while the sun shines [but, then again, am I really going outside? Probably not.]).

All of this cumlinates and ferments and leaves me feeling the way I do--depressed, unkempt, unwanted, and forgotten. When Debbie comes home, yes, I feel better, but I know that tomorrow will bring more of the same.

We have to move away from here. Debbie and I say this nearly very day. We have to go at least one more year in this area, but I want no more than that. We have to leave. Go somewhere else. A kinder town, a more walkable neighborhood, a less yuppie- and power-driven populace. We have to leave.

But I still can't even get out of my apartment, most days.