BLOGZIL!

Various people (read: my parents) have been urging me to send pictures of my new apartment, so now that I have internet I will oblige them. I really like my new apartment. It is simultaneously cozy and airy. It manages this combination by being a) owned and decorated by a lovely hippie-ish woman who is extremely into raw and sprouted foods, and by b) missing a wall. Look at the "table" picture closely and you will see the tarp that is my east-facing barrier to the world. Safety-wise this isn't much of a problem, since I live on the fourth floor of a four-floor building. If the thieves really want to do the grappling hook and zip line work needed to get in here, they might as well just have my stuff. (Knock on wood, if it would happen anywhere it would happen in Rio.) The rest of the apartment isn't exactly air-tight either. The "windows" in the first kitchen picture are in fact no more than empty panes of wood, and there are significant gaps between the roof and the extant walls as well.

My apartment makes me happy, which is what a good apartment should do. Except for the easy permeation by ants and mosquitos, and for a while birds (when my landlord still had her wheat-grass-growing trays in here I'd wake up in the mornings to like fifteen birds munching on them, then bolting out my windows, leaving bird shit on my floor), the place is great. It's a block from the beach (which I stupidly never go to) and costs about as much as a Cambridge walk-in closet. Satisfied customer.

The only problem is occasional loneliness. I live alone now, and it's kind of quiet. Life with Márcia was never quiet. I loved it, but there was no privacy, and I used to long for solitude like this. Now that I have it it's a mixed blessing. I miss Márcia.