Complex - Street View

"So I guess you heard..." I didn't know exactly how to respond.  The living legend of her Uncle has become a regular legend of her Uncle, the final installment of the summer blockbuster she was the reluctant fan of.  He's the Twilight series.  No, that's not fair; he's Star Wars, and his death is the end of the prequel series, and she just realized this is her last chance to see it in theaters... as though there won't be countless IMAX, 3-D, and laser light show opportunities to explore his legacy. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Now is not the time for callous jadedness, quite the opposite.  Not my specialty unfortunately, where most have tenderness and compassion, I have probing questions and seemingly cold academic curiosity.  I have only hunches of what my final wood sculpture of her relationship with her Uncle will resemble, and my Dremel and chisel set are biased. Of course they were close, I knew this the way I knew disco and punk were close, the way I knew missiles and fireworks were close, ----------------------------------------------------------------------------  "Yeah, there is a note posted on the bulletin board over there. They still don't have anybody's email address." Fortunately she wasn't listening.  "He left me the complex." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  How many times have we bumped into each other at the nearby laundromat and talked until our clothes were dry and room temperature about the injustices of her Uncle's building management.   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- he made us feel powerless and trapped in an otherwise nice historic building in an extremely desirable neighborhood.  Then there was his habit of seducing his female tenants and then thinking he could blackmail them when they got boyfriends...  He has selectively chased away everyone we even began to make friends with until all the tenants are men with predatory inclinations to be ignored at our peril.  -------------------------------------------------------------------------- "I'm not glad he's dead."  ---------------------------------------------------------- I replied to myself, "Yeah, definitely, nobody deserves to die." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------  She deserves most of the credit for developing into the independent, self-driven woman she became.  He provided a nice dwelling for her, but her teenage years were fraught with instability.  Once she dropped out of middle school to help his girlfriend sell pills in a Walgreens parking lot as part of a pyramid scheme (which, as it was later revealed, was because she was actually addicted to the pills), she began the momentum of self-sacrifice that would define her through her developmental years and beyond.   He was funny, charismatic, and, to an extent, emotionally supportive, but only when it benefited him and the building.  When she got her GED and started sending college applications, he told her to shoot for the stars, but kept her busy with menial tasks at the complex, which were of course always in abundance, until the threat of her leaving was reduced to one or two night classes per semester at a local community college.   His "family business" was the closest thing to stability he ever knew, with a blur of girlfriends and partners he sabotaged into obscurity, and the weight of rationalizing this falling on her shoulders.  Her energy for bearing this weight was so easy to mistake for reciprocation, a machine of perfect efficiency.  Except now he's dead and she still carries this weight.  He maintained her the same way he maintained his building... you might even say he saw no difference between them.  

Whenever she complained to him about the conditions and demanded an improvement, ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- she felt obligated to be grateful.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.  Her lack of entitlement was bladder the size of a skyscraper,  and as her complaints grew more dire, ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- only shifted more weight onto her.  His penance became more extravagant and more useless, especially since she had no room to put it so she ends up donating it. Ironically, the local St. Vincent DePaul thrift store made her a nice plaque, for which she had no room, so she removed the dedication tag and went to donate it to the Salvation Army across town (to avoid hurt feelings).  She was robbed en route. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Faced with the grizzly prospect of having to settle the books, pass an honest inspection, and decide what to do with the building, we realized our only option was pretty much what we always do: get high in the alleyway.  It either helps me engage with people more emotionally, or makes my pointed questions seem less insensitive.   "Do you want to be a landlord?"  "Fuck no! I would burn this place to the ground if I didn't care about the neighborhood so much."  She felt guilty as her words echoed.  Our frequent desire to redact and reshape our words is a strong tenet of our bond.  "But if I'm going to clean up the place, I should probably still live there, right?"  After a long pause, she confesses, ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   "I understand.  But I want to help you so you don't need to do that. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  I need to give her time to recognize the parallels between her situation and my relationship with my father.   ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------, the rats in her building were a place holder for what would inevitably come to the surface.  She had not mentioned ghosts before, but she sounded frightened and vulnerable and had latched onto something as so many feelings passed through her fingers.  I knew that right now was when I should let her reach her own conclusion.  Unfortunately, I asked a really practical question about testing her theory with an exterminator.  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In my ham-fisted kindness she only saw more clutter. "Definitely not. Why should I put you guys out... and what if the ghosts follow me?"  I wanted to scream into her ear that she needs not worry about this, but for once I was discreet.  I asked her more about the ghosts.  Maybe she would calmly realize what I want to write in chalk on the cement floor.   "I've blocked them from my conscious mind for --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now his death has made me realize that what I thought were rats were ghosts all along.  They stumble around my apartment... do ghosts normally stumble?  They jingle keys at me that are worn down from overuse, but I let them in anyway just to make the sound go away, and out of mercy.  Maybe if I let them in from the cold for a moment, they will warm up enough to move on."  When you discover that someone is haunted by the same ghosts as you, it is basically like being in someone's bedroom when they just got home.  It is best to quickly climb out the window and down the fire escape and knock on the front door.  Unfortunately, I just climbed into the fire escape, left the window open and started describing my ghosts.  I could see her relating to my experience, and while it drew us closer it did not seem to ease her trepidation.  As I poured out my explanation, I noticed that I was floating and drifting away from the momentum of my words.  Was I actually being pulled up to my own fire escape?  She tried to follow me to listen, she was so intent on understanding, but we were speaking over one another.  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  As my door swallowed me, I tried to yell out that ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- and that her abandonment would -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------, but I am not sure if she heard me.  She sent me a text message from the airport the next day, saying she will be traveling abroad and her phone will be out of service.  I found my laundry neatly folded.  I felt bad for yelling about the pregnancy, but -----------------------------------------