More Songs about Buildings and Terrifying Heights

Fomo and Andy Hoffman and I are hanging out on the balcony talking about a thing. What this thing is, I have no idea, except that it is smaller than a breadbox and motile. I am discussing the significant number of times I have lost track of this thing and had to retrieve it from the top of the building, because that is where the thing goes when it's not monitored. Brain runs through each of these experiences; in all cases they entail climbing out a window onto a ledge, manoeuvring onto the roof, climbing up to the cupola, climbing onto the cupola, and retrieving the thing from the very top of the spire at the center of the cupola. Despite the routineness of the routine, some of these episodes are hairier than others, but in all cases (I tell Fomo and Andy), "It's a pretty tricky thing to do."

Of course these climbs are exactly the sort of acrophobic dreams with which Brain loves to torment me. I almost always manage to avoid falling off the ledge, or the telephone pole, or the mountainside, or the wobbly 2-by-4 I have to cross to get from my home to anywhere else in the world—all such precipices impossibly high above the ground. Indeed, in many cases I am quite adept at traversing the nonsensical aerial obstacle courses Brain presents me with; but the acrophobia is always there regardless, a background of rank stomach-churning terror.

Anyway, we're on the balcony, which is more like the roof over the front of a bungalow—sloping very gentle down toward a steel railing. The slope is covered with Astroturf. Andy is skeptical that the climb of this building's roof and cupola, to retrieve the thing, is a bad as I have made it out to be. Fomo is looking over the railing at how high up we are; he drops a pillow over the railing to see how it falls.  and lands. I do not get near the edge or the railing, but I know the height is ambiguous: we are simultaneously on the second floor and thousands of feet off the ground.

It is time for me to go home. Home is currently a couple rooms on the third floor of a building that Barry Solan converted from a movie theater (not, curiously, the State; though we seem to be in Newark we are somewhere north of Main Street) into a boarding house. It seems I moved out of a second floor room some time ago and immediately regretted doing so; I have sorely wanted that room back. Barry's senior Video Américain employee Mike took over the second floor room I abandoned. Another video store employee whose name I forget is serving as the building manager; he told me—last week? two weeks ago?—that Mike has unofficially taken lodging elsewhere; and so he gave me a spare key to my old room, saying, "Effectively, this can be your room again..." but that's not what my lease says and it's unclear whether there may be unfavorable consequences to my staying in what it now Mike's room. Of course when I get to Mike's room, Mike is actually in there—or at least somebody is sleeping in the bed, so I head to my third floor room...

Which of course I cannot find. Apparently I've only slept there once or twice (maybe I've been couch surfing) and this place is huge and confusing. I head up a flights of stairs to the third floor. There is a woman sitting in the hallway ahead with whom I strongly wish not to interact—because I can't remember her name and I should? because it will be clear I have no idea how to get to my room?—so I turn in the other direction. I'm immediately doubtful this is the right way; indeed I pass a few other doors and then the only other egress is out French doors onto the roof. Well, maybe there's another way back into a different part of the third floor from here? Nope. It occurs to me that this house is deliberately set up as a labyrinth: unless you know exactly where you're going, you keep finding dead ends.

It is near month end and so I consider changing rooms again: I know one tiny room is currently vacant and would cost much less than my current rooms—and I ask myself, what do I need the room for besides a place to sleep? Except, oops, I own too much stuff to fit in a smaller room. Hey, no fair, this is just like real life!