And Nothingness

He plies his trade with meticulous care, weighing, measuring, disassembling and tweaking his special gun with artisanal devotion. And the virtues of the film itself are those of craft rather than art. 
-- AO Scott, ever meticulous.

To give you a sense of the span of time, in 1998 I logged onto the Poets & Writers website with the stunned intimidation of an acolyte joining the priesthood. I told myself not to open my mouth, which in more literal terms means lurk, not post. I imagine some of the women of Speakeasy would have appreciated the counter factual of never knowing I existed. Admittedly, I hurt some of these women unfairly, sitting here at Tom Reid's hand painted desk, the eastward wall of my studio bordering the janitor's supply closet. 19 years here at Riverside, relocated assault victim, screaming to leave to anyone who would listen. "It is nice here," people say. 

In terms of the entitlement nation that alarms George Will, this particular public housing building may be nice. Beneath the surface it bears all the hallmarks of a re-education camp.

Poets & Writers kicked me off their site due to my mental anguish in coping with this landlord, constant housekeeping issues. It is mid 2013 now, and I was wrong to believe that submitting my notice to Trudy or her future replacement was the one choice I could still make. Not really, as I cannot pack my belongings and cannot drive voluntarily on battery power much past seventh street. From the first day my father left me here overnight in a heap of furnishings in 1994 (my mother had to rescue me), I hated living here. I have to leave, and that is tantamount to a death sentence, one that Anton Corbijn stalks through tunnels and terraced pathways I necessarily could not navigate. Despair is literally making me ill, as much as George Clooney is a rack of doomed nerves in beautiful Roma, bella Roma.

I'd sell my soul to get off this dead end corner of Race Street, to get away from the autonomic remains of ancient Africans who think in monosyllables, to get away from the skeletal remains of Erik von Schmetterling, and the Gladhandler, equally cadaverous.