by Tim Gilmore, 7/28/2012
Fungal house, Joeandy Road North, almost 20 years old, grey aluminum vinyl exterior walls, garage takes up more than one third of the façade of the house.
This morning in the house on Joeandy Road North, a man rose from his bed and made a pot of coffee. He can read, but he can’t read well. He doesn’t know that 47 percent of his city’s residents are functionally illiterate. He made a pot of coffee from water pumped up from deep in the Floridan Aquifer and coffee grains grown in Ethiopia. The aquifer developed millions of years ago in the late Pliocene. The coffee beans were harvested two years ago. The coffee was made this morning.
The drywall in the back wall of the house on Joeandy Road North continued to rot away today. The house is almost 20 years old. A century plant sits sharp and grey green, surrounded by marble chips bought at a big-box hardware store, surrounded by the front lawn. Carolina wrens nest in the ligustrum hedge growing at the side of the garage, but no one has noticed.
This year the harvest moon coincides with the autumnal equinox. For one moment, the reflection of the moon glows in the shine on the new sportscar that pulls into the driveway, but then the car pulls into the garage, the garage door closes behind it, and the harvest moon disappears.
The house fills up with television, with its lights and its sounds. One of the new sitcoms is funny, and the wife on the show is sexy. There are no books in the house. Refrigerator. The beer is cold. The air conditioning is cold. The sofa is soft. The car is in the garage. Tomorrow is Thursday. The weekend is coming. Sunday is the game, live as long as the team can sell enough tickets to avoid a TV blackout. The commercial break is over. The show is coming back on.
Neighbors complain that lots of cars have been using Joeandy Road to bypass Atlantic Boulevard and Girvin Road and wonder how they can get some stop signs on Joeandy.
When developers had almost finished the house on Joeandy Road North, a cyclist hit a piece of sewage pipe in the road and fell. It cured his sciatic nerve pain initially brought on by long-distance running. Lonely it is, long-distance running. The cyclist later writes, “It is not recommended by any real doctors, but one whom I told about it was impressed.” The city’s last remaining newspaper publishes such grammatically garbled wisdom. It doesn’t know the difference.
Five year-old Argentine Black and White Tegu Lizard. Named Brian. Animal Control at first claimed a Nile Monitor was loose on Joeandy Road. Then Brian the Lizard scared a firefighter in a laundry room. A group of firefighters converged upon Brian and trapped him beneath an upturned garbage can. Brian is three feet long. He weights 15 pounds. The kids living on and around Joeandy Road North like to watch Brian swallow dairy eggs whole.
There are many houses on Joeandy Road North, cheaply built with identical floor plans and grey aluminum vinyl exterior walls, but in this one house, a man rinses his plates and glasses at 10:47 p.m. and places them in his dishwasher. If official history ignores such events, a true history would include them. This history includes this event. The man places a small amount of Lemon Fresh liquid dish gel automatic dishwashing detergent into the dishwasher. He presses the button that says, “Cycles Normal Wash,” and he turns the dial from “Off” past “Quick Rinse” to “Normal / Light Wash.” The dishwasher heats up, shoots hot water through the “dish gel” (Lemon Fresh) against the plates and glasses, sloshes for 35 minutes, then empties hot water and detergent and the dishes’ detritus through the plumbing into the city’s sewage system. These are the cleansing practices of future ancient Joeandy Road North, when already the water pumped into kitchen appliances is more ancient than the oldest and most mystical and ancient things. Something Druidic or Timucuan. Old. Historic dishwasher moment. Every moment becomes historic when realized. Kenmore Quiet Guard Ultra Wash Sensor Series 2 Dishwasher in the house on Joeandy Road North. The man in the house stands always in awe of the oldness of water.
