The world is seen through a hole in a shoebox.
All of these little fully functional, all included shoe boxes, with an oven that is guaranteed to have cooked meth at one point, and is certainly through on its’ warranty. A bathtub designed to fill up with black sludge when it decides to rain. Lights that flicker and outlets that don’t work.
Let’s not forget the constant movement of all of the other shoebox villagers so close and near to your home, invading privacy with no intent to do so. All the noise and chatter heard at all hours not like a symphony but like the script for a play about gang violence and income inequality. This is what I know, it’s something I’m used to. Yet, I still feel as uncomfortable in my own home as I always have. This isn’t home, it’s not where my heart is. It’s just another little stack of lives, and families, and human beings all crunched together and trying to live the life that they feel they deserve.
And how the world is full of these shoebox complexes, some are shinier I’m sure, and some are far more tattered but yet they all seem to me to be the same. I’m cramped and claustrophobic and I long for a place much more my own. A place to feel safe, to feel connected to my own version of the world, a place to think and feel and breath without the buzzing of this little human ecosystem all around me.
