For a short time when I was married (so it was about 1988 or 1989) I gallery-sat at Reko Muse in downtown Olympia, kind of as a big sister of art, I suppose. I had to get the key from someone who often failed to arrive punctually, then sit and read. The artwork was not terribly interesting -- standard trying-to be-cutting-edge stuff like filling the place with mud, etc., etc. Same old, same old. I enjoyed it, though, and would've done it more except the person to whom I was married at the time was wildly against it. I saw a graffito in the toilet at Reko Muse I've always remembered -- "668, neighbor to The Beast," -- that I still think is hilarious.

My other lateral neighbor, not the highly noisy one, has a very stinky, noisy activity going on outside my livingroom window -- the stink woke me as much as the noise, which is a constant power-take-off noise, and could be worse. The pong seems un-fume-y -- thank god, as MS is Bad with Fumes. Both sides are completely mad this summer, but at least this is not outside my open bedroom windows. My underneath neighbor has evil wind chimes that I despise -- as constant polluters of my sonic space. The bottom people have their moments of extreme noise, too, such as a son's live music at 2 am under my bedroom, or a yapping, crying dog of a visitor tied up beneath my bedroom window for hours when I have a headache. Generally they aren't bad. And the windchimes are the worst of the other fellow (and some door slamming). I must produce my own noise, however, such as my computer -- plays a WAV of an atom bomb exploding when Windows starts up (usually turned way down but not always). My answering machine is noisy when the phone is off the hook. Um... I don't watch TV except once or twice a year I might rent a movie... I wasn't formerly as intolerant, but then if something bugged me I could just go elsewhere...or I probably already was elsewhere and never got bugged to begin with. The stupid MS, as well as making one -- this is how I think of it -- turn into wood, as Daphne turned into a laurel tree when pursued by Apollo -- makes one feel terrible all the time, and also makes it hard to escape from other people's rackets. They are just living their lives, after all. I must practise tolerance...om.