The Last Word On Nothing

From my apartment most of the view is a small parking lot, a few stories below me, lined by vines and a few weedy trees.

The last few weeks, a mockingbird has been loudly claiming this as his territory. On and on and on, a few phrases of a song he’s learned, then to the next song, then to the next one and the next. The dead stems of winter are turning green, hiding the chain link fences.

I’ve spent more time than usual admiring this little parking lot this month. The space between my desk, on the inside wall of my apartment, and the compost bins, at the far corner of the parking lot, are most of my world right now.

My job can be done almost as well remotely as it can in the office, and some things are better. Video conferences have given me a window into my colleagues’ world–their cats, their babies, their interior decorating choices. I’ve fallen hard for Jackson, a rat terrier who likes to jump into his owner’s lap for a better view over her desk and out the window at the squirrels.

Like Jackson, I enjoy the occasional squirrel outside my window. Sunday afternoon as I wrote this, I got up, walked over to the window, and saw two mourning doves cross the parking lot and settle, shaking their wings, one on a light post and one on a stretch of barbed wire. A gray squirrel spent a minute trying to figure out if it could get anything good out of a grate in the pavement, paused for a moment to scratch its head with a rear foot, then left the grate and drank from a puddle.

It’s almost too obvious to point out, that life goes on even while so many of us wait out this virus inside. I’ve only seen a possum crawl between the broken roof tiles of the shed next door once, but I assume it’s carrying on in there. Bugs still land on my window. Sometimes a cat runs by. My worst neighbor still drives way too fast through the parking lot.

While other people do their jobs, the epidemiology and trash collection and nursing and grocery restocking and everything else that is required at this time, I will sit here in my apartment, watching the squirrels and waiting for the weeds to bloom.

Photo: Helen Fields, after taking the trash out on March 29, 2020.