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I am not blessed with many things; I can not see the light at the end of the tunnel, I can not float cannonballs, I can not make beautiful girls dance forbidden dances in my head. This being said there is one thing I can do: random acts of pointless crime.
Picture a car (no officer not my car), a driver (no officer not I) lost in a maze of run down suburbia. Houses made in the 40s for the grey and mundane, once coloured with happy dog walking folks, pie baking mothers, gee-wiz kids, morgue stiff fathers. Now only the people who work the jobs that you won't work, live there; the people who "The Gap" moved out of your upwardly neighbourhood; the ones that drive fifty miles a way to say "Have a nice day!".
I stop the car at the biggest house in the neighbourhood, once perhaps the developer's home, now undeveloped, devolved, delightfully deadened. The front door is locked, but behind back there is a first floor window open above ivy choked latice. My hands are known to be strong, strong enough for ivy tangles, warped window panes, and strong enough to grip the inside molding and pull me quietly inside.
There is nothing so peaceful as a freshly broken into house, nothing I like more than to sit straight down on the old carpeting and stare into the dark of a new room and listen to the creaks and groans of a stranger's safe home.
The first room: a collectors dream, brik, brak, flik, flak, everything kitch, everything with a niche. Paintings interspace the walls, shining oils glowe in the half light, paintings of distorted people, cloud shapped children, hooded goblins. A large sign is attached to a door, "Toilet, use at your own risk", why would someone need warnings about their own bathroom? Inflatable animals, books on legs, books on movies, movies of books, books on books, half bodied mannequins with long shapely legs in soft hosery. I find myself sat on a large collection of 50s erotic fiction, with titles like: "The Mother Truckers" and "The Ladies' Barracks" with illustrated covers to match.
The next room is a dark and musty closet, making me wheeze, I am sure it's full of interesting things, but not what I'm looking for. You might ask what I am looking for, I don't know yet, something missing, something they have that was a part of me, more important than wanting, something I needed. I would be sure when I saw it.
The upstairs corridor is covered in bright cotton fabrics instead of wallpaper, I can't stop myself from brushing the material on both walls with my finger tips as I walk downstairs. The first downstairs room is a study, with books lining all the walls, I begin to giggle with joy. Pressing my back against a bookshelf and staring, my spine against the spines of books, the bookshelf moves as I press against it and some books move under my weight. Looking back I see that I pushed "The Last Jews of Berlin" and "Kermit reads to his nephew" deeper into the shelf, it's odd that anyone would put those two books so close together.
The living room contains two old couches and many desks, over the walls is the eerie sight of childrens' dolls nailed or pinned into place, there are too many things to look at, too much to describe. Everything in the room disolves to abstract, finally I see the object.
I have never felt so much bliss, finding the object that completes me in a stranger's house, it is perfection. Lying there on the floor under a newspaper, a simple silver orb, glimmering slightly. So soft and smooth, warm to the touch, the floating insides glowing in the light, flakes of white snow and silver sparks that swirl like dreams. Shaking it my whole world twist too, like a kaleidoscope that shows chaos instead of perfect order. Clutching it to my chest and heart, I run out through the front door, into my car and drive two streets before stopping between streetlights under a dark tree. Tired and overwhelmed I climb back into the back seat and with my neck cricked against the arm rest, my tight pants loosened and the shinging orb safe in my arms; I fall asleep.
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