There Are No Privileged Observers

Track Two: Sunday Morning--Velvet Underground

I don't recall now how I came to be standing behind my house at such an inhuman hour. There I was, just after dawn, watching. Watching what? That's precisely what I asked myself after about thirty seconds. You see, the view across the back of my property is something less than pastoral, and entirely devoid of anything even remotely interesting enough to engage my attention before noon. But I had staggeringly little else with which to occupy myself at the time. I couldn't even have a decent breakfast for a few more minutes, as I had only just put a bagel in the toaster. Oh, well. A little quiet observation might do some good. So I decided to relax and enjoy the sunrise. This was a failure. The sunrises I tend to enjoy the most are the ones on colorful vacation postcards, or, more frequently, the ones containing tequila. Fair enough, I'll stare somewhere else. To the south/southwest, the land becomes wooded. Not badly so, either, save for the scrubby second- and third-growth which really needs to be cleared. Much manual labor. Balls. Into the western and northern quadrants, the property opens up, spreading out with, it must be said, very little grace and charm. Lots of open, rolling land, mostly unfettered...
And full of grass, I think, with a sudden pang, grass which will need mowing before too long. Not to mention fertilizing, watering, de-thatching...
Yes. I realize, with no small quailing of spirit, that, even though it's only January, it's not at all too early to begin preparing for another season of lawn-maintenance festivities. Ugh. Which reminds me. I hope that the neighbors will keep their lawn in order this season. Then it dawns on me--no pun intended--that I have new neighbors. Someone finally got duped into moving into the sad, ramshackle little place up the hill from my house. It had been empty for so long that I’d begun to wonder if the owner was ever going to snare another pigeon. I have no idea what became of the last tenants. Seriously. I came home one afternoon this past summer and just happened to notice that some of their belongings were scattered about outside, and the family car seemingly abandoned in the yard. I thought little of it, and continued to do so for the remainder of the next three to four weeks, during which time they gave no more sign of their whereabouts than the late James Hoffa. At some point, a month or more later, the husband returned, apparently to collect the automobile. Mildly interested to note his return, I watched for a while as he busied himself about the place. After a few minutes, he strode purposefully west, across his yard, across the brambly ditch which marks the extreme boundary of his property, and off, it would seem, into the obscurity of the ages. I haven’t seen him since. Thinking about his disappearance, my mind lit upon the enormous nest of armor-plated, nuclear-powered hornets which, as near as I recall, seems magically to appear each spring very near the mysterious neighbor’s last known position. For years now, I’ve been meaning to deal with that. It’s only a matter of time before a squadron of the benighted things decide to carry away my dog. Or perhaps my house. I suppose I could at least protect the area immediately about my domicile with some sort of bug-zapper, with the added benefit that those are great sources of canine amusement, thus saving me tedious hours of throw-the-stick, fail-to-have-same-returned, which is our peculiar variation on the classic game of fetch. Oh, wait. No. I can’t plug in the bug-zapper, because I keep forgetting to repair my one external outlet. It has never, to my knowledge, functioned. But this crucial fact always eludes me until such time as I need to use t, in which case I am always in something of a rush, and so find it much simpler to use an extension cord connected indoors. This latter has always proven especially convenient since there is a fully functional outlet just inside the front door. The only drawback, I’ve found, is that the decorative solid-glass storm-door never closes just right with the cord passing through it, thus leading to the possibility that a sudden gust of wind might...
But that’s no longer a problem at all, I remember, as said glass door has, as the result of a recent accident, been rendered mostly nonexistent.
I knew there was something I needed to do today...

A whiff of black smoke alerts me to the fact that my bagel has recently begun its fascinating metamorphosis back into its constituent carbon. I head inside, noting as I go that the hinges on the door need oiling badly.

As an afterthought, I recall why quiet observation always puts me in a bad mood.