Since moving into the dormitory, it would be interesting to calculate a rough number representing my visits to the front doors for a cigarette. The best method, if one were interested enough, might be to track my identification number for access card swipes during the first term and then extrapolate for the remainder of my time here. Sometime during the second quarter, I became so often seen that the security guards started to simply buzz me in when they saw me put out my cigarette.
First term, I watched the clock to make sure the gaps in my smoking were spacious enough to avoid possible criticism. I didn't find out until third term my roommate, in fact, liked the smell of second-hand smoke. He didn't speak much at first, and I don't pull teeth. He wasn't much of a housewarming gift, and I acclimate to my surroundings with such resistance that when I got here I was pretty sure even the vending machines were capable of biting.
Though now, how I've grown to love the metrosexual clique, to whom I now find myself bumming cigarettes; and the many faces I've met who I can count on for supportive conversational brevity. But someone built an office building between the eyeshot of my favorite conversation piece, and I know it's time to move on.
The conversation piece I write of is Milwaukee's Natural Gas building. It bears great resemblence to the haunted apartment building of Ghostbusters 1. What function the structure serves is unknown to me. However, from its topmost pinnacled bricks rises a glass flame. This flame is a weather beacon. It is lit blue when cold weather is on the way, yellow when the weather is stable, and red when the weather will be warmer. Also, it flashes slowly when precipitation is expected.
As I've mentioned, there is now an office building between the dormitories and the weather beacon. The other day, as some good friends and I were passing time downtown, I explained all of this to them, and also, "You can't see it from the dorms anymore, but there's so much glass in that office building, I'm suprised you can't see right through it."
Tonight, as I paced, smoking, waiting for one of the same friends to whom I had told the story of the beacon, I caught a flash of red in several of the office building's many windows. I looked again and it was gone. A moment later, it was there again. Between the leftmost garbage can and third tree from the street, one could actually see the weather beacon stridently blinking through the glass office building! I must mention, from this vantage point, there is a great deal of overlap of these two buildings.
As summer falls, and I pack my bags of this place, the trees between the special place of viewing and the office building and the weather beacon will grow foliage and most likely hide this phenomenon for the remaining season. I will however, be moving to a street, in a place with a balcony, that looks up at the Natural Gas building. From my new angle, and from in my new friendly neighborhood, I may have conversations with passerby from the balcony, as I've stepped out for a cigarette.
- "Nice day isn't it?"
- "And it looks like we're uh... going to get some rain."
A septuple of since Thursday:
- i lost myself... for a minute...
- i slept
- i ate
- i worked on school-related projects
- i blogged
- i talked on the phone
- ...i got better ...i got strong.
