And I couldn't afford to heat/cool any of them

So, it's times like these [when I'm battling a lingering ailment, underemployed, and supposed to be working in at least a half-assed way on a large project (such as a dissertation)] that my mind wanders and I end up with total writer's block/hating everything about every element of the aforementioned large project.  The emergence of Facebook as part of my daily internet consumption has dumbed down the wandering a bit--oh, I wonder if anybody's posted anything new in the past thirty minutes?--and today I decided enough was enough.  Instead of procrastinating by idly chatting with my brother or refreshing my "news feed" every ten seconds, I decided to go back down older internet paths, paths that are totally overgrown in my current epoch of Facebook, email, and Hulu.  I ended up reading as much backlog of Maud Newton's blog as I could before I felt even worse than I did when I was castigating myself, by myself, for having become a dumb web surfer. 

None of that is the point.  The point is that, as has happened in the past, I was reading Maud Newtown's thoughts on books, so I decided that grinding poverty isn't bad enough already, and ordered a few new books on Amazon--which is conveniently linked to my diminishing bank account.  I did it for my dissertation.  I do write better, and think more clearly, when I'm reading a good book.  This is true even though my dissertation is not (to my knowledge) fiction and the books that help me write the best are.  If I was self-employed (running my very own dissertation production firm), I'd totally write the 40 bucks I just blew on books off on my taxes.  That's how necessary reading good fiction is to my ability to think with anything resembling full brain power.

But that's not the point either.  The point is: I realized today that viewing the shipping page on Amazon.com is like an excavation of my old addresses and a few other important addresses to which I've sent things via Amazon.  Amazon didn't exist before I moved to DC in the 1990s, and apparently, I didn't use it before I lived on Irving Street.  So the memory archaelogy of any residences I occupied before Irving Street will have to come from some other source, but every time I place an order on Amazon, I experience some sensation related to the addresses it does list. 

Today, I mainly experienced feelings of guilt because the address that caught my eye was that of my friend on death row.  I haven't visited in months and I feel like the terrible friend that I am, but there's something about seeing that address in the list of potential targets for my new books that made me feel even worse about being a bad friend than I did before.  Perhaps it was the contrast between my blithely ordering a stack of new reading material with the excuse that it'll solve my writer's block "problem" and what I know his problems are.  But guilt is only one sensation the shipping page can evoke.  On other days, I've recalled the color of the paint in the stairwell at Brookings where NAF was located, remembered the sensation of climbing up the steps of the basement apartment on Irving into the snow-leveled stillness of the early morning street, wondered about how T's twins are doing and shuddered at the thought of having twins by accident.  I've also remembered how serene the good days of spring and summer on Irving Street were.  I've recalled thinking about hopeful new beginnings when we moved in to Harvard Street.  And just as clearly, I've re-felt the gradually crushing disappointment as it became obvious that the things I hoped for wouldn't emerge, but without rancor.  The minutiae of daily life, tiny scenes or states of being, are what somehow come back in a fleeting burst when I read my old addresses on a screen.  The major events that supply the narrative of time spent at a place slide over a little and let the smaller things enter my brain on these occasions.  That specific feelings and nearly tactile memories can be conjured from reading the street addresses of the places I've lived reminds me that the accumulation of daily experiences is all life really is.  This makes me less inclined to experience Facebook daily from here on out.

Comments

[John Mayer]

Hi Lauren,
You and you're writing are incredible. I found myself having just the set of experiences you described...After seeing our address where we lived off 16th with Danny, I was led to reading your page as I've been negligent for a while...crazy to then read this!

Also, Eugene just sent a gift addressed to Hanna and I to my parents' house for the holidays. I just, full of guilt, wrote him back for the first time in too long of a time. Connection with one's past, seems to be a nice thing to do on purpose once in a while, especially when something differently charged leads one there.

Ahh, Amazon. I'm glad I know you, even if I only see you once in a decade.

[Lauren Lastrapes]

Ah, John Mayer. I've missed you. Of course, when I don't see people frequently, I don't realize I miss them until one of us gets in touch. I'm so glad you did! And what interesting timing your decision to look at my sad, abandoned blog demonstrates! Perhaps we're mentally connected in the cosmos.

I'm glad you wrote to Eugene. I believe the guilt that comes from not contacting people whose lives we chose to enter is a special variety. I know how you feel.

I hope you and Hanna are doing well. Send me an email sometime and catch me up on what's going on with y'all way out West.

I'm glad I know you, too.