february 11, 2006 in the year of our Lord.

i made the move to my first apartment, 222 west james, with josh. we went to high school together. we went to punk shows together. we went to creation together. we went to church together. we went to college together. we went to south carolina together. so, it was only fitting that we rented jimmy together.

we sat in the living room, orange corduroy recliner, maroon love seat, talking theology or politics or art or ricky oh. we ate food, he and i, something organic, something processed. we - he - took in a cat and we - she - named him jack. he was asthmatic and fat, he farted and smelled so josh gave him bottled water. and i offered to throw him out the window.

dmx across the alley yelling obscenities and beating his wife and cursing his barking dog in the early morning hours just below my window. conversations with charley, always in circles, always about the weather and the saint louis cardinals and kids these days. full-time smoker, that charley, and full-time kook. but he made jimmy home.

out the front we had the fireworks on summer nights, the street all parked up with baseball fans. we tried to catch a glimpse of juan, but juan was gone.

josh took the big room, the front windows, the trees. i took the small room, back window, the view.

i’d climb out the window to breathe, onto the roof to live. i’d strain my ear in an effort to hear the members of live playing basketball in the tower downtown. there were two steeples in view, the catholic one beyond the townhouses and the episcopal one just to the left of the warehouse. the dome on mary baker eddy’s place had a certain warmth from across the street that is hard to come by when you’re walking past. sitting on my roof you could also see the park, that piece of semi-recreational goodness, slicing its way through the block, that would-be oasis if not for the shooting in the leg.

in february the weather is cold but the apartment is not. i turned the heat off a week after the move and never turned it back on. i slept with the window open beside my bed from april through august - first because there is something to be said for digging deep in the covers to escape a cold wind blowing through your room, but later, in the summer, as a survival tactic, seeing as jimmy was/is sans a/c.

and so i left jimmy in august, setting out for the orient, fully expecting to return three months later and to resume life as usual. but rent has no respect for a jobless man, so my return to jimmy was delayed. december, gone. january, gone.

so, now, february 1, the end of an all-too-brief era: jimmy is gone.

i took one last polaroid out the window. to remember. to show the grandkids someday. this is jimmy, i will say. this was home.

and sitting in the cafe, the author makes a compelling mention of a song by an until-now foreign (to me) artist, and downloading and enjoying the song, i got the whole album, and - this happened today, mind you - on the album, completely unbeknownst to me, is this song, and it is epic.

So long, Jimmy, so long.

Life goes on.