No roomies, living alone

written on january 21, 2008

This is exactly the room I had in mind when I wrote one of my few poems, Missing Cheese, that when I moved in two weeks ago, I was sniffing in search of even just a faint whiff of Missing Cheese cheese.

There isn't any trace of the creamy, earthy stench of camembert or roquefort. The janitress who ushered me has obviously kept the room in tenantable conditions. Well, at least, she has managed to sweep off whatever debris she left after filing her fingernails while haphazardly doing the occasional cleaning.

I am not after cheese in the air. But my dorm room, the size of two queen-sizd beds put together, is a capsule of solitary confinement, it would help if another one moves in! It wouldn't matter if the hamper plays gracious host to yet another pair of smelly socks each night.

But then again these are just stupid melodramatic episodes of a fresh grad acting like a brat, wishing for things that cannot be as of the moment.And episodes as they are, they come only in flashes, when there's nothing else to think about.

My room is a pretty decent space the width of a corridor and a modest size just enough for a bed, a closet, a built-in bedside table and a working desk. It's in the third floor of a yellow building by a busy main street where cars, jeepneys, buses and pedicabls plying all routes posible pass through.

Up in my room it may be a tolerable sanctuary for four thousand pesos a month shutting out urban noise abd decay, albeit not completely.

the revving and zooms of vehicles are still audible in a murmur, reminding me that tomorrow and the days to come, I would be loading up on the grease of Jollibee and the pseudo CHinese fare of Chow King, both a spitting distance from our building.