Good Friday always makes me think back to the First House of Clocks. One of the more notorious parties we had there was the Be Bad on Good Friday Party. We crucified Ian and played Pin the Nail of Jesus. I remember someone shouting "the beer's on fire!" and rushing to put out the flames. You know it's a real party when you have a beer fire.

We had music in the old tinfoil covered playroom. The old playroom was crazy. I mean, really crazy. Tinfoil walls, strange paintings along with random items screwed into the ceiling. I had written on the walls and the floors. Blissfully hopeful things and abysmally awful things. The pictures on the walls didn't match up spatially with their frames. A Twister mat was the table cloth. It was me. Me then. Strange, cluttered, mismatched, bright, stark, broken, glowing, and scary. I'm different now. I am no longer that room. I am breaking out of a chrysalis, not sure yet of what I have become.

While I was sitting on a bench on the shore Spy Pond last week, I found myself looking down from above at Spy Pond and the autumnal trees of Elizabeth Island. Whether this was some sort of spontaneous out of body experience or a product of dissociation combined with vertigo and a high aptitude for spacial transitioning, I do not know.

Regardless of how I got there, it brought my thoughts to the budgies. The budgies get a lot of out-of-cage time. They fly around a lot in Lake's apartment. But it's not the same. The room has a ceiling and walls. The room has limits and I wish I could give them the sky. They are birds, that freedom is their hatchright. It seems unfair to keep them contained, but there is no realistic other option. To set them free in New England, especially on the dawn of winter, would be to give them death sentences.

We do our best to give them the closest to what they deserve as possible. We try to give them what we hope is a better life than they would have in the wild: providing a constant food supply, healthcare, and freedom from predators. It might not be enough, but it is all that we have to offer.

i miss the playroom at the old house_of_clocks
it was such a representation of me
i had all sorts of things written on the wall
the writings were all pieces of me
angry and happy
resilient and giving up
my tinfoil room
odd things screwed and nailed to the ceiling
plastic eggshells, pictures, etc.
gave it a odd feel
it was shiny
my tinfoil room
i'd see shapes in the walls
everything was bright
either reflective or colorful
or often both
the room was where i spent most my time
i miss that room
it was crazy like me

i took cold medicine but i feel worse
i can't tell if i'm hot or cold
or if i should be
i'm dizzy
i can't think right
i'm sweaty and cold and hot
my socks smell bad
gotta clean them
i don't know where most of my socks went
they seem to be disappearing
i'll put baking soda in them for the time being
i don't really feel up to cleaning and i need to wear something on my feet
everything is spinning
maybe i can find some clean socks
maybe i can find any socks
they're all gone
the angles in the room are bizarre
and everything is spinning

I've taken the following text out of my profile.

The walls in my room are covered in tinfoil. The ceiling has pictures screwed onto it (nails wouldn't hold). I've written on the walls and the floors. And various other surreal objects adorn the walls and shelves.

I just made a new ceiling ornament out of blood red pipe cleaners for the playroom. I think it looks pretty good.