Minus Returns After An Unintentional Six Month Hiatus
A whole lot has gone down in the life of Minus these past few months. Some good. Some bad. Some very, very, very bad. Some so bad that I kind of went numb and sought refuge in a cave that was my apartment. I stopped short of hearing voices, but when my friend sent me a link to a New Yorker article titled, Hellhole, I decided it might be time for my inner child to make some changes.
Hellhole wasn’t intended as one of those, “I thought you might find this interesting” gestures. It was a genuine punch in the face. One that almost took me by surprise. In short, the piece talked about solitary confinement and how it’s one of the most inhumane forms of torture. It described the lives of monkeys and men who were accidental and intentional experiments and it talked about their brains and their minds and how they had become something of a cannibalizing vortex and, well, i didn’t want to become a 34-year old drooler with Marilyn Manson eyes, so I reduced my wordly possessions by almost 85% and moved. Into another apartment. Still in Brooklyn, but remote enough that I would be forced to walk actual distances. Now I’m living with two people who are strangers. They like to talk to each other and watch tv together and have actual conversations and I’ve required myself to participate. All of these things I did to myself on purpose, in an effort to halt my tracks and go a different way.
The only thing I feared with my move was the possibility that I could end up in a neighborhood that was just a little too sane, but those fears were quickly put to rest the day I went to get the keys. Parked alongside the curb sat an old army green Volkswagen van, with a did-it-myself camouflage patterned canoe strapped to the top, Abraham Lincoln stenciled on the side, and a plastered collection of the greatest hits in bumper sticker history covered both glass and metal. As I read aloud, “God was my copilot, but we crashed into the mountains and I ate him,” I knew that I was home.
Tags: "hellhole", "minus five", "moving", "new york", "new yorker", "sarah coffman", Brooklyn
