Left Outside

It's the things that go unexplained in this city that stick with me.

Like what you see to the left. It's not much of a picture, and I'm sorry, but I can describe what I found to you.

In the very lefthand edge of the shot is the front door to my apartment building in Spanish Harlem. The main focus is of the entrance to the building next door. It's around midnight last night. The streets are empty, and the only sign of life is a baby bottle, mostly full, sitting upright on the front step.

I don't know why it's there, who it belonged to, or really what was actually inside.

I'd just come home from the Shakespeare forum. On my way out, I got a hug from a friend who I had only seen half a dozen times since we did a show together in February.

"I never get to hear what's going on except in your blog," She said.

"And I haven't written in it." I admitted.

The trouble is partly time. I have eight tutoring students to take care of, several of them are... let's say "high maintenance." Also not knowing what to say. I've been to Chicago and back. And Seattle and back. I've learned some very big things about myself due to rather outwardly minor and uninteresting events that I'm still unraveling in my head.

I lose track of things in my life. Especially around this time at night, a little past midnight. I finished the novel. I haven't brought myself to read it yet. I have a performance next Tuesday. I leave for Seattle again the Tuesday after that for Christmas. I haven't done any shopping for it. I have a new television and the first video game I've bought in around five years sitting in my apartment.

I've gotten a half dozen brilliant ideas of what to do with myself over the last week, started half of them, and really not finished any. A lot of them involve voiceover. One involved graduate school, and not for acting. I'll probably write more about that later, but it relates to the "still unraveling in my head" category I mentioned before.

So if I can't give you a coherent story, I can at least give you an image. A tired twenty-five year old tutor coming home to find a baby bottle on the next door's front steps at midnight. I took a picture of it, and got a strange look from the only other passerby on the street. As if I'd set the whole thing up.

I didn't. And while it wasn't wondering who did and why that kept me lying awake and staring at the ceiling in bed past 3am that night, I'd still like to know.