Practicalmadness

From my window I’m looking down on the lawn in front of Roberto Clemente High School. It’s not the lawn as it is right now, covered in at least a foot of snow, but as it has looked: gray-green with no leaves in the trees.

There are groups — no, processions — of students…not high schoolers but young kids. They’re leading animals with ropes around their necks. Sometimes the animals are just students dressed as animals, and sometimes the animals are real. I recall seeing a bear suit, a fox suit and at least two live cows. The ones in costumes are almost always walking toward me, the real animals almost always walking away towards the hospital.

I hear the “Ghost Rider” ringtone, a ringtone I am convinced exists only in my dreams and which is associated eternally with Clemente High for some reason. I don’t know how I came to call it the “Ghost Rider Ringtone” — I think at some point I decided that it was the music from a movie about the comic book called Ghost Rider, in which a flaming skeleton on a motorcycle avenges the innocent. I move to silence my cell phone.

The sun is golden against the walls. I am standing in front of “Kingdom Hospital”, which is St. Mary of Nazareth around the corner from my house. I know why I call it Kingdom Hospital: because it’s creepy. Kingdom was the name of the hospital from a miniseries Lars von Trier made for Danish television about a haunted hospital; it was later remade by Stephen King into a bloody stupid American series about a haunted hospital. I call it Kingdom Hospital because of its bizarre architecture. It’s a pale concrete structure, and there are these huge ducts and vents protruding from the sides into the air. It’s a single monolithic structure: it’s not one of those hospital complexes with several medium- to large-sized buildings. It’s just the one big building, oddly shaped, with those damned vents. It doesn’t seem like a place where people go to be healed. It seems like a factory.

In retrospect it seems like this is more of a playset or movie set version of the blocks surrounding my house. It’s all done in broad strokes, with not as much distance as there should be between Kingdom and my house, between Clemente and my house. I’m not home, I’m in a representation of my home. I find my Bluetooth headset on the sidewalk, and thinking it’s garbage I throw it away. I realize what I’ve done and I pick it back up.

Halfway back to my apartment, and as I’m walking back I see my messenger bag laying on the grass, empty and covered with water as if it had been rained on, abandoned for days. At this point I notice that the Ghost Rider tone is coming from the hospital behind me, rather than from home. Or that it’s coming from all directions, mocking me. The cell phone is not at home or in the bag or in my pocket. The bag is not just empty — it’s contents have been stolen, or the bag has been stolen, its contents taken and the bag left. I’m thinking, “I left the bag at home. Oh god!”

I run home. A neon green EVICTED sticker is in my front window and the door is open, and in my mind I begin bargaining. I paid the rent, why are you doing this? If I do x, will you not do this? If I do y, will you not do this? What can I do, will you not do this? I run into the house, just into the front door where I hear movers taking things out of one of the apartments. The sounds are coming from my downstairs neighbor rather than my place, but at this point I know better than to trust which direction a sound is coming from. I walk in, and at this point I wake up.