The landlord visited a few weeks back. She brought superglue. And a plastic bag of vegetables — green cabbage, zucchini, carrots — that smelled like fish and went into my fridge.
Best to take what the landlord gives you.
She came into my room and superglued a thin window crack. The windows are new, she said. She apologized for the crack, could’ve been an installation error. I said it was alright. She left a tube of glue for me. It’s the size of a thumbtack. I’m not sure where it is now.
Since Tuesday, I’ve seen the sun rise above Arco Gas from my window. I clock into my work at 6am. The light dries the clouds off the street. I make coffee in the kitchen. I use my phone flashlight. I take a meeting.
My coffee grinder is not Mr. Coffee, which my mother told me was the best. Twenty years she’s had it, she said, and it has yet to break. She also told me to get a brush. To keep the grinder clean. It is on the to do list. I am getting there.
I don’t know the grinder’s brand. It came from Target. After I put it in my cart, I went to the home goods section, and I dropped a candle. It shattered. A man came over. Radioed in a sweep. I was smelling the candles. I wanted to buy one. But I had to leave the scene. Target, with its linoleum and fluorescence and reverb, can make a man wilt. Andrew and I took our carts to the cart escalator.
We put them on.
My cart broke the cart escalator. Made it stutter, an inch forward, an inch back, like a CD skipping.
The security guard with a gun came over. A Target employee came over. The security guard looked at the cart escalator. The employee pressed some buttons. A third person joined. I saw my friend Max. Passerby’s on the escalator looked on, rising. The third person turned the cart escalator on and stood on the adjacent human escalator and rose with the cart, holding it.
“Don’t let go!” said Employee One.
“I’m gonna let go, I don’t need to hold it, I’m letting go,” said the Cart Holder.
He dropped it. The cart stuttered and the escalator broke. “Sorry,” said the Cart Holder. He rode the other escalator down and came back up. This time he did not let go.
We drove home, passing the rusted vintage boats hitched to the rusted vintage pick-up trucks on Geary.
Maybe one way to not waste your youth is to record it.
The blessing, too, is that I could say the opposite, and believe it just as much.