To Cure a Restless Mind

The dog next door has taken to barking nonstop at different points of the day. His name is Lucas. He's a tiny little thing, light brown curly fur, with so much of it his eyes are hidden most of the time I've seen him. He has a blue cast on one leg, and you can tell when he's outside because amongst the cute little pitter patter of his feet, there's the occasional thunk of plaster on wood. He's a sweetheart, and whenever I see him with his owner when I'm out and about, I stop to give him a scratch behind the ear.

Sometimes he whines, sometimes he barks. We can hear him from the other side of the kitchen wall. His owner has apologized profusely for the sound. I told her it's okay; dogs will be dogs.

We live on the second floor of our tiny complex. Our neighbors below us are Korean (I used to work with one of them), and I often hear him singing, mostly in the morning just after I step out of the shower  or in the afternoon right before dinner. He has a clear voice that's quite soothing to listen to.

There's a married couple on the ground level that like playing a downsized version of badminton in the tiny parking lot. I've seen them most often at dusk, as the atmosphere makes everything glow orange and red, and when things have calmed from the day. They stand about twelve feet apart, batting the birdie back and forth. The woman is beautiful. She has long black hair that she wears pulled back or in a long braid that reaches to the backs of her knees. Both she and her husband came over to meet Emma's dog once as we were chatting in the parking lot. They are very nice people. Everyone we've met here is.

We hear conversations in Chinese next door on the other side, late into the night. It's those times I wonder how much they can hear from our apartment.

I play music sometimes around midday when I'm making lunch or doing the dishes. My roommate has a laugh that could easily carry through walls. I tend to yell a bit when I get excited about something, as does my roommate. I watch a lot of movies on the DVD player, and I often wonder if the volume is too loud.

In those moments when I sit in our living room, thinking too much about all the things that are happening, the things that are worrying me, I notice these little things. I keep thinking about Harriet the Spy and how Ole Golly was always encouraging Harriet to write down everything she saw if she wanted to be a writer. And yes, Harriet was spying on people. But what she came to realize was that as a writer, she was less of a spy and more of an observer. It's the little things that you notice, how everyone has their own way of eating tacos, for instance, or the strange things people put into their shopping carts at the grocery store.* The way light comes through the window in the early morning, how people talk to one another in church as opposed to how they interact at a party or in intimate conversation. It's anything and everything about growing up and living in a new town or in your own hometown. The smell of your grandparents house, or the memories that float in the back of your mind without explanation. It's making sense of how crazy life seems at two in the morning or when your emotions are so overwrought and wrung out you're not sure where to go. As writers, as artists, as people, we are always noticing things. It's proof of the complexity of life, how things are continuously changing, and how it goes on.

We are observers of the world, of the unique life experiences we have. All we need to do is notice them. It's one reason we're compelled to create. We're always on the search for some kind of understanding.


*A few weeks ago, I saw a man pushing a cart entirely full of chicken. I think they might have been leg/thigh combinations.