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Coffee: Maxwell House Master Blend, Office Coffee
A woman talked to me about carpets. Her father had been in the business. She told me how to cut them, where to trim, how to corner, what to do with rooms and halls. “High pile,” she said, “you have to be careful.” And I was already getting lost in it, like a bug sniffing through the fabric on all fours.
She also talked about Jordan Lake. Her father owned 120 acres of farmland before they flooded it. Prime Chatham, top dollar, in walks the Army Corp of Engineers, a booker, a paycheck, not a lot of options. “We could leave or we could learn to scuba, that’s what they told us.” Eminent domain and all that. Just a few weeks ago I had a picnic on the lakeside where we watched the late summer sink in.
They’re adding on to the Triangle Expressway, or trying to. The bills are up for legislation on account of environmental concerns, this or that endangered oyster. But like all slow moving bulls of government it’ll eventually charge, cutting up the land with buyouts, evicting 285 homes and businesses. A toll road, so you’ll pay for the freedom of driving over someone else’s memories.
The carpet in our apartment is crusty mustard. It’s bunched and fickle with how it lumps up or thins, and so you don’t think it’s all our fault most of the deformities were here before us. I’d call it medium pile. It stays the same color no matter what way you’re looking at it. They’ll strip it when we move.
Currently Reading: Another Country, James Baldwin
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Property breeds lawyers, I said, forbearing to add a belief that unfortunately property now seemed the only thing palpable enough to demand the respect of governments, and perhaps was the generating clout against encroachments on the spiritual protections for speech, assembly, and so on. It might turn out that without the right to possess we are not sure we really have the right to speak and to be.
Arthur Miller, Salesman in Beijing
Livesay Writing 