«Sleeping on the Floor»

02-10-2309

     I can’t tell you how much it thrills me to be able to sleep in a comfortable bed tonight. For the past 7 weeks I’ve been making nests of various piles of blankets and sleeping bags, ever since I got kicked out of my last apartment. In almost two months I’ve jumped at every chance I’ve gotten just to lay down on someone’s bed and prayed I could get a couch wherever I crashed. Even when I went home to Earth, I had to sleep on the floor of my old room cause my brother commandeered my bed after my cat pissed on his. I was too amused by the situation to care at the time.

     All that time tossing on unsporting floorboards and thin carpet just reminded me of when I first moved to Mars and had no where to stay but Linda’s house. Hell, even after I moved into my first apartment with Pashan, where I just had that broken futon, I still spent almost every night sleeping on the ground in my girlfriend’s bedroom. Even this past summer I spent a lot of time on Allan‘s floor because I still lived half an hour away from my life. But now that’s all over.

     Yes, now I am coming to you from my new apartment on the other side of Costa Mensa. I may have mentioned a complex I looked up, last year while I was first trying to move, called Villa Venusia. If not, it’s a beautifully spacious gated community with an artificial lake that runs through the entire complex. Even in between the rows of buildings where walkways and driveways would belong, deceptively shallow streams and tributaries meander about, trickling over boulders or spewing with fountains. The fortunate residents that live within the inner units even have balconies that rest on the water where one could sit on the edge and dangle your toes if you so chose.

     I may not be that fortunate, but I’m still lucky I got the place I did. It’s a small 2-Bedroom on the second story of one of the units in the back, but far from a shabby residence. I found the room online through one of those sketchy classified services, so I was expecting the worst when it came to the roommate I picked. It turned out for the best, thankfully.

     Witt is a nice Ganymedean woman and we share a few things in common, including a birth sign and roots in Keret, where she grew up and where my father‘s family is from. Although, there is definitely a generation gap pervading our conversations, though deep and insightful, what with her being my own mother’s age. She does like to drag me into these long talks as I’m trying to get back to my room or out the front door, but I don’t mind cause sometimes I do actually want to respond, and any other time her busy schedule keeps her out of the house.

     It only took me a couple days to get all my stuff from Manna and Justene’s garage up to my room and unpacked, and now I’m surrounded by the familiar knickknacks and images from parts of the Solar system I’ve never even been. My portable workstation seems relieved to be unpacked and has been successfully integrated into it’s new homesphere–no need to buccaneer my way into a random unsecured network. I remain seated at it most of the day and night since I don’t have a teli to keep me inebriated, but sometimes when my back is hurting from being hunched over a keyboard and computer screen, I take a few minutes to thumb through one of my books or pluck a few chords on my guitar.

     Actually, now that I mention it, I’ve been on the nets all day researching tourism on Jupiter and Saturn, instead of looking for a job to pay for such a holiday. My back is murdering me and I feel like I’m starting to get sick, so I’m gonna go turn in for the night and lay down on a fluffy, inviting mattress.

«Everything I’ll Miss»

10-01-2308

     I’m finally moving to Costa Mensa!

     For two years now I’ve lived in a certain satisfying squalor, fitting of a starving artist. A weeks passing will change all that though, I’m leaving this desert town behind for good, albeit six months later than I‘d have liked.

     Walking to the front door in the red hot afternoon I take a moment to appreciate it all. The dry, static air giving not so much as a tease of a breeze. The ambient roar of the adjacent expressway layered with crescendos of construction equipment. Without searching for something else to loathe, I quickly use the key and step into my unit.

     Inside I take a look around at everything I’ll miss. The broken stop recessed into the wall, the uneven floor and the stub by the door . The cracks in the wall and in the ancient coke bottle cabinets, older than a few wars. The glacier slowly encroaching upon my refrigerator, dripping onto the disgustingly outdated linoleum floor. The antique stench released by every cabinet and drawer. The sea of discarded cigarettes surging against a cement shore. The strange scavengers living in the spaces between the units and underneath the patio.

     The soothing swish outside my window of wind and traffic waves breaking. The nauseous primary blue paint on my bedroom walls I love so much I could just puke. The army of thick black hair spawned by the Jovian, lurking in every corner of the bathroom. The smashing new tile job, with grout that disintegrated the moment water splashed on it. The shower with reversed hookups, contradicting the conventional “Hot-Cold” label, thus leading to painfully confusing situations. Actually, let’s stop with the bathroom here, I could fill another page with complaints about the bathroom alone. The bathroom is dead to me.

     There’s actually nothing too fantastic about the place other than the cost of rent, which is increasing anyway. The location is inconvenient, the management is unhelpful, conditions intolerable, and always too damn hot everywhere in this town but the hill. I’ll be glad when I don’t have a bedroom that offers such a brilliant, picturesque view of the sunrise each day without fail. I don’t really know my roommate or my neighbors, only that they make loud noises in their native tongues late at night; Pashan chatting with girls back home on Europa while it‘s daytime there–my Martian neighbors just singing along with already deafening music that comes with the night. There’s really not much.

     In hindsight I’ll spot something worth missing of this place that I can’t bring with me. In the meantime though, I’ll just grab my coat and head down to the back porch to shed what may be my last tear for the nicotine coastline.

     I’m finally moving to Costa Mensa!

     For two years now I’ve lived in a certain satisfying squalor, fitting of a starving artist. A weeks passing will change all that though, I’m leaving this desert town behind for good, albeit six months later than I‘d have liked.

     Walking to the front door in the red hot afternoon I take a moment to appreciate it all. The dry, static air giving not so much as a tease of a breeze. The ambient roar of the adjacent expressway layered with crescendos of construction equipment. Without searching for something else to loathe, I quickly use the key and step into my unit.

     Inside I take a look around at everything I’ll miss. The broken stop recessed into the wall, the uneven floor and the stub by the door . The cracks in the wall and in the ancient coke bottle cabinets, older than a few wars. The glacier slowly encroaching upon my refrigerator, dripping onto the disgustingly outdated linoleum floor. The antique stench released by every cabinet and drawer. The sea of discarded cigarettes surging against a cement shore. The strange scavengers living in the spaces between the units and underneath the patio.

     The soothing swish outside my window of wind and traffic waves breaking. The nauseous primary blue paint on my bedroom walls I love so much I could just puke. The army of thick black hair spawned by the Jovian, lurking in every corner of the bathroom. The smashing new tile job, with grout that disintegrated the moment water splashed on it. The shower with reversed hookups, contradicting the conventional “Hot-Cold” label, thus leading to painfully confusing situations. Actually, let’s stop with the bathroom here, I could fill another page with complaints about the bathroom alone. The bathroom is dead to me.

     There’s actually nothing too fantastic about the place other than the cost of rent, which is increasing anyway. The location is inconvenient, the management is unhelpful, conditions intolerable, and always too damn hot everywhere in this town but the hill. I’ll be glad when I don’t have a bedroom that offers such a brilliant, picturesque view of the sunrise each day without fail. I don’t really know my roommate or my neighbors, only that they make loud noises in their native tongues late at night; Pashan chatting with girls back home on Europa while it‘s daytime there–my Martian neighbors just singing along with already deafening music that comes with the night. There’s really not much.

     In hindsight I’ll spot something worth missing of this place that I can’t bring with me. In the meantime though, I’ll just grab my coat and head down to the back porch to shed what may be my last tear for the nicotine coastline.

 

«Respite»

06-06-2308

     It was about 3 in the morning when I stepped out for a cigarette. I didn’t have a watch but I knew because the second sprinklers were going. I was smoking out front this time so the soft projectiles were begging at my slip-ons. Ever since Pashan left on vacation 2 weeks ago I’d been spending a lot more time downstairs where its more hospitable than my room. He’d be on Europa, his home, for another month and a half so I could enjoy respite from the first hot weeks of summer in our uninsulated unit.

     I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding this thing for a while, a whole month to be exact. I’ve been distracted with not doing a whole lot. Well, let me rephrase: I haven’t been doing much physically–a lot of sitting w/ a book in my hand or a texti to my ear. You see a friend of mine has come from Earth and has been living in the city for a few weeks now, so you can understand my absence.

     Eon Beurot came to Mars to escape herself, or rather what she had become. We had never been the closest of friends in school, but whenever we did hang out I remember enjoying it immensely. Since forever ago, she insisted that people call her Lou, or Onny, or anything but her real name because she doesn’t like the way it sounds. But I do, and always have, so I call her Eon anyway. I remember us having had deep respect for each others work–mine visual, hers literary–and we always wished we had gotten to know each other better. Sometime after I graduated we lost contact and I slipped into chemical haze for the next year before I moved to Fender. Following a tragic event around the same time, she embarked upon her own inebriated odyssey.

     The winds took her all across the Earth, though she never had the pleasure of settling for longer than a few months before another gust came to uproot her. A couple jobs and a fiance later, they brought her to rest at last upon the rusted face of Mars. And if it weren’t for social network applications and their obnoxious sharing of every detail committed by you to your entire network, I’d have never noticed she arrived here.

     Let me just start out by saying it is so nice to have a like minded person to relate to in a foreign place like this. What a relief to see someone from home has arrived in this strange place, right? After that, I should mention that I have had the bigges–Ehrr–sorry, I’m buzzing, I have to get it.

     I’ll get back to this soon.

«My Minifeed»

03-03-2308

     For the entire time I’ve shared the unit with my Jovian roommate we’ve complained about our occupations as wannabe net pirates. A wireless receiver, which can be found in practically anything from a texti to soda can, will only keep you connected if you’re within radius of a point. Meager is the minimum wage compared to cost of life in OC and my roomie knew as well as I did it couldn’t win the battle over food and electricity; and why should we really? The signal from a modem isn’t diminished by walls or floors, as one is intended to spread over a whole residence, and there are plenty of units in proximity with higher incomes, or handy relatives, who unwittingly donate a little bandwidth. The only problems you face with buccaneering some spheres are the measures people take to prevent hacking or leeching. You might think it simple since the obsolescence of the coaxial or the push away from fiber optics–you don’t have to splice your neighbors line anymore, rather you can just hop right into their feed.

     Although, its not as easy as I’m making it sound. Most people end up taking an unprotected signal versus tangle with password protection. Some people get too frustrated with a cramped jacuzzi they keep losing their place in. But if you’re really willing to go the extra step, and you can get through a password, be warned you’ll likely be faced with a myriad of firewalls, hack traps, or even bots programmed to infect intruders with crippling viri. Some are particularly destructive strains, capable of mortally wounding key hardware components. I’m sure the Jovian Pashan is as unwilling as I am to seek such an encounter, so we came to a consensus and decided it was time to go legit and invest in our own access point.

     I really shouldn‘t be trying to afford anything else though, what with being recently unemployed. I didn’t even save enough money when I was working at the bookstore, barely making it out of there every Friday with my paycheck intact. There are so many unread hardcovers and trades just collecting dust in the living room, which is also probably coated by a thin layer of neglect. Clothbound novelties on all manner of subject from prehistoric art to goddess literature and studies of shamanic cultures throughout the solar system. But I fancy I could read a few pages in the time saved from not taking 20 minutes just to check my mail with this weak signal. You don’t want to know how long it takes to get my minifeed. Archaics and old fashioned families usually take in a full cast from the teli, but anyone who’s young or just hep and living on the go needs it in a more readily accessible, swallowable shape. I take my cast on the fly, not even really gripping it’s implications till I’m half way to work.

     With Martian traffic though, it’s sometimes all you have to stay sane.

     For the entire time I’ve shared the unit with my Jovian roommate we’ve complained about our occupations as wannabe net pirates. A wireless receiver, which can be found in practically anything from a texti to soda can, will only keep you connected if you’re within radius of a point. Meager is the minimum wage compared to cost of life in OC and my roomie knew as well as I did it couldn’t win the battle over food and electricity; and why should we really? The signal from a modem isn’t diminished by walls or floors, as one is intended to spread over a whole residence, and there are plenty of units in proximity with higher incomes, or handy relatives, who unwittingly donate a little bandwidth. The only problems you face with buccaneering some spheres are the measures people take to prevent hacking or leeching. You might think it simple since the obsolescence of the coaxial or the push away from fiber optics–you don’t have to splice your neighbors line anymore, rather you can just hop right into their feed.

     Although, its not as easy as I’m making it sound. Most people end up taking an unprotected signal versus tangle with password protection. Some people get too frustrated with a cramped jacuzzi they keep losing their place in. But if you’re really willing to go the extra step, and you can get through a password, be warned you’ll likely be faced with a myriad of firewalls, hack traps, or even bots programmed to infect intruders with crippling viri. Some are particularly destructive strains, capable of mortally wounding key hardware components. I’m sure the Jovian Pashan is as unwilling as I am to seek such an encounter, so we came to a consensus and decided it was time to go legit and invest in our own access point.

     I really shouldn‘t be trying to afford anything else though, what with being recently unemployed. I didn’t even save enough money when I was working at the bookstore, barely making it out of there every Friday with my paycheck intact. There are so many unread hardcovers and trades just collecting dust in the living room, which is also probably coated by a thin layer of neglect. Clothbound novelties on all manner of subject from prehistoric art to goddess literature and studies of shamanic cultures throughout the solar system. But I fancy I could read a few pages in the time saved from not taking 20 minutes just to check my mail with this weak signal. You don’t want to know how long it takes to get my minifeed. Archaics and old fashioned families usually take in a full cast from the teli, but anyone who’s young or just hep and living on the go needs it in a more readily accessible, swallowable shape. I take my cast on the fly, not even really gripping it’s implications till I’m half way to work.

     With Martian traffic though, it’s sometimes all you have to stay sane.