here i am up on a mountaintop

oh golly. it sure is great.

important fact: my roommate is made out of gold.

here is a silly picture of us with some carter hall room #360 flora:

(the humble green plant, clusia, is apparently capable of reaching a stately stature of over thirty feet. i did not know this when i purchased it for $1.99, but the prospect excites me, however impractical and improbable it may sound when considered in the confines of a room the size of a small canoe.)

my job is to clean things. i have acquired many useful skills that i previously struggled to perform gracefully. you should see with what adeptness i can coil a vacuum cleaner cord these days. you should see how smartly i scrub toilets. i don't mind so much. in the chapel at seven a.m., birds come and sing on the windowsill while i spray and wipe the glass. i can't hear them chirp because the glass is so thick, but i can see their little mouths move sharply. piano and violin strangle each other in a lovely muffled mess, played in side-by-side practice rooms. there is genteel and amusing tension there. i spy on the practice for west side story while i tidy the auditorium. i held a small grudge against a certain group of people who ate powdered donuts in the same spot every day until i realized it was just the ceiling crumbling a little bit and snowing down onto the chairs and carpet.

i have a little collection of apples that i take from meals and forget to eat. they punctuate our room nicely but soon they will get mushy. for now i'll admire their shape and color and continue to forget that they are food. how pleasant and wasteful! oh dear.