It was like a movie. — act one: prologue

If my first twelve years were disbursed in placelessness, these last twelve have been the other side of the coin — one billing address with nowhere to move except from room to room. No need to leave — I can see it all from my porch, mid-hill above the street like a discount loge seat. The neighborhood is teeming with standard exceptionalisms. The theater never ends.

Let's imagine we're at a 24-hour matinee with feet up on the balcony rail. The movie hasn't started yet, so I'll fill you in with an unfiltered reader's copy prologue:

            I moved in as a renter. The landlord was Rose: a liverish diamante who thought of herself as a liberal due to anxiety meds & a leased Subaru. Her companion was close to her age in dog years & named Romeo. Rose’s throat emitted a hawk circling in the clouds. Not long after settling in, she offered to sell the place during a midnight phone call made after a tree fell on the roof. It sounded like a sound proposition — I mean, how often could that happen?

As it turns out, the current answer is — you guessed it — twelve years later. During a recent week-long ice storm, trees fell in all directions around the property like shattering wine glasses. No one in the neighborhood was spared — except the ones who deserved it, which is usually how the universe works. The tree service left last month with a full-belly wood-chipper & a credit card number. The yard now appears to have had a drunken haircut — refreshingly hungover in vernal aftershave.

The neighbors come & go like weather house clock figurines. Some are silent as shadows merely obeying the sun. Others provoke each other with verbal strikes across backyard fences & sometimes take it out front to physically roughhouse on the non-parking side of the street until the cops come & tell them to go back inside to scream at their loved ones & pets.

Are these seats okay? It's the best view, really. Our movie screen will be the four addresses directly across the street. In the next few episodes of It was like a movie., we'll develop the film & become one-sidedly familiar with the neighbors.

you can read on with It was like a movie. — act two: Rita