There was the love of picking things up and then putting them down elsewhere. Of taking a cloth out of the dryer and pressing it flat with two hands at every fold. Of taking a brush to dust the surface, then taking bottle to spray the surface, then wiping down the surface with a different cloth. There was the uptick of the rug positioned rightly in front of the couch, the rightness of how few things there were relative to the space but how each of these things knew how to be in the space. This felt like a of tyranny of goodness in a single unit.
Of course there is only so long you can look around admiring how right everything is in the space you control. Outside, there are neglected mutts, fenced in. Did they look around, expecting comfort? Yes, obviously, they did. But you can’t think like a dog thinks, no matter how transparent they might seem. Humans don’t approximate the same level of vulnerability or grace. We try to project onto dogs because we think ourselves superior, our ideas more complex. But it’s possible an animal so open to wounding has interpreted an entirely other world—we are constantly beside the point of it and they allow it and allow it and allow it.
Continuing out of the gorgeous, spare unit you could end up in a supermarket. That supermarket could smell like there is sticky residue congealing beneath everything. You could pick up a waxy apple and look around distractedly, the lighting fixtures warning you to keep moving, it’s cold in this section. You didn’t so much forget to grab a basket or cart as you refused because you didn’t have a plan. A tall woman walks by hunched over her cart, which just has an assorted packet of teas and three packs of Barilla pasta (also assorted). You can hear everyone not talking below the hum drum of inquiry: Where are the paper towels? Suddenly it becomes very urgent to decide what’s for dinner. What do you even know how to make? Maybe you should’ve gone to the grocery store your app tells you you cannot really afford, where buying vegetables feels more like a hopeful act.
Ok what next, you just go back home? You drive by a public park and think this ought to be a place where community materializes. In a bid for a conventionally sexy body you didn’t buy ice cream this time, it’s 65 degrees, you can step outside for 15, 20 minutes, make friends on the subsidized lawn. Oh good, there’s a path, somewhere to go. You take it, smiling at every person on a bench. It’s mostly older men. A kind of assortment of older men—47, 58, 92. A few kids, running into bench legs. Dogs, well-kept, squatting to poo yet nothing comes out. These aren’t like the dogs you know.
Back at home, everything’s arranged for you. You put the groceries away before you consider leaving out what you need to cook dinner. It’s depressing all laid out, since what you’ll make is just a medley of vegetables over rice. It will materialize quite quickly so, in the end, you didn’t require the expediency of having everything arranged ahead. You’ll have kids. Everyone you know your age has really rejected it for themselves but you know that a child barreling into your legs, screaming, crying for attention and care would be the opposite of your meager provisions all laid out as if they required a real culinary effort. The child would barely be yours, its own projections hurtling into the dogs next door.