thispresentsojourn

Directly next door to my house – in fact just past our living room’s west windows – lives a woman I have encountered only twice. It is perhaps of no coincidence that both occurred while hosting a large group of friends to some late-night event in our backyard.

Heedless to the presence of any neighboring residents, our guests rarely maintain much control over the volume of their voice or the content of their speech. Both of the times we have seen the woman in the neighboring house, she stomps outside in a pink nightgown, which is a garment nowhere near the austerity of her shout. And she leans over the chain link fence.

“HEY! IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU’RE ALL INSIDE MY BEDROOM! JUST – JUST STOP!”

Rarely our guests make anything of it, though in my loyalty to the neighborhood and its greater good, I can hardly help but feel I’ve been a bit of a disappointment. My roommate must feel at least some the same, for both times we’ve apologized and made a genuine attempt tamper down the noise spewing forth from our guests.

To our neighbor’s despair, usually nothing substantial can be managed, and for hours the noise will pummel her window with an ugly force. I can hardly help but feel I’ve been a bit of a disappointment.

… .. … .. … .. … .. … .. … .. …

Perhaps Ellsworth has begun to appear an introspective sanctum, a sure slip into some quiet serenity, or that all of my free time is enjoyed from the front steps in observation of my neighbors’ outdoor activity. Maybe it also appears I devote the majority of my thought to peculiar things like the wise grandeur of an oak tree, or that few activities are more worth my time than a simple recline beneath the breadth of Texas’ stunning, purple dusk. While these assumptions wouldn’t be wrong [in isolation of the others or as a whole], they don’t tell the entire story. No, the richest episodes from my Ellsworthian stay are the moments when I’ve shared it with others, and when they are no less happy to share it with me.

Take a step outside from the kitchen to borrow into March’s cool air. Pour down the three short steps that introduce the plush back lawn. To your left you’ll notice Stanley standing sprightly, and at your right leans that decrepit old shed. At the very center of your sight sit seven lawn chairs circled around a table, whose centerpiece is a white candle and a spattering of half-full matchbooks. Ever since Wal-Mart traded us these chairs for cash back in May, they have not at all moved. Not even a little.

Directly inside this circle and immediately below is a smaller circle of grass which is dead, dry, and thin by the number of lawnchair-occupants whose shoes’ve stamped at its surface. As I think back on all the feet that have pressed down this portion of lawn in the past year – a spectrum of Summer’s sweaty feet to Winter’s woolly socks – I decide it’d be unjust to feel uneasy, even in slight.

Well over a year removed from the exodus of an admittedly bleak exile, I sit staring from one of the lawnchairs at the ground beneath my feet. The grassy geometry below is the evidence of a richness possible only in shared Company, and I am gravid with thrill that tonight, this inner circle will find itself even nearer the earth.