How to Open a Door

For those of you who live in a house that has more than one door
I recommend the following:

Identify the door that you use most often
This should not be difficult.

Next, identify one of the perhaps many doors which you never use.
This should be more difficult.

You probably dont remember that this door is a door.
There are probably boxes in front of the door and most likely
you have lost the key to it's lock or maybe it never even had a key.
This door only locks from the inside and if you want to come in through it
you have to be let in by someone already inside, or else the door has to be left open
or unlocked in anticipation of your arrival.

Once you have identified this second door you should move the boxes
away from it and if someone has built a shelf across the top of the door
unscrew and remove the shelf-
first take the things off the shelf. These things can probably be thrown out.
They are either too dusty to keep or too useless.
It is very important that you immediately dispose of the shelf itself.
There is nothing more dangerously useless
than the pieces of a shelf left leaning against a wall in a corner.
Get them out, shred them in a large machine
made for shredding no-longer-needed shelves. Invent such a machine if you cannot find one.

Once you have removed the dusty things
from the useless shelf, destroyed the shelf and unblocked the door
you should open the door.

You might be tempted at this point
to abandon the whole endeavor if, for instance, the screen in the storm door is ripped.
You will tell yourself "flies will get in through that rip."

After you have identified the inevitability of flies and understood the dangers
of going ahead with this plan, you must decide to not care about the flies.
Decide to understand how flies are a small problem in the larger scheme of things.
Once you understand you will understand.
Thats all I can say about the flies.

Now, use that strangely shaped sliding metal square to hold the storm door ajar-
think, as you have often thought before about the person who invented that sliding metal square.
Wonder again why it is so specifically curved with that little fold on the top-
do you know the little bit I'm talking about?
That little disk attached to the arm of a storm door.
The slidely little square
that slides along and then, impossibly, holds the heavy spring-taught door open
even in strong wind?
Its a genius little thing-

Now- Use that genius little square slidey thing to hold the door wide open.
Sit down in the open doorway on the cement stoop
and put your bare feet on the top step which should be covered in bright green moss.
The moss is there because no one has stepped on these steps in years.
Admire the moss.

You are not allowed to feel sad about the destroyed shelf
but you can be a little sad about the soon-to-be-destroyed moss
The moss will be gone because this will be the front door now.
This will be the main and most used door.

Park your car in a new place,
a nearby place that is in logical relationship to this new main door.
Daydream about the footpath that will appear in the grass
it will perfectly connect your parking spot to your door.
Screw a small hook into the wall near the door and next time you come home
hang your keys on that hook.
Leave your shoes nearby and drop your bag in the closest corner.

Next time you leave leave through the new door.
Continue until someone builds a shelf over that other almost forgotten door-
the one that used to be the main door
when that happens don't revert back to that door
find a different door.

A stranger's notebook and a songwriting class

Someone else found your notebook first and brought it inside.
I know this because when i found it this morning it was inside on the magazine rack among the broadway show coupons but it was soggy and rained on.
I took it knowing it would probably just be full of lists. It was just full of lists
I read them. You are comparing the pros and cons of various bland model cars, a CRV an accord, a Passat. I know that you dont like leather seats, you list them as a con because they make your back sweaty but you also sometimes list leather seats as a pro which is confusing what do you want?
Youre not doing anything until June 17th and then you're teaching something... but i cant tell what... something about video games and stop motion I might know you...
You rank possible employees on a scale of 'dud' to 'rockstar'

There are lots of people who jog and walk their dogs on this campus.
Do they call this place "the college"? do they say "honey? im taking the dog for a walk at the college"? or do they say "taking the dog for a walk at SUNY"?
Im fairly certain they do not say "Purchase" because most likely they live in Purchase-the-place and so would not refer to the campus where they walk their dog with the same name.

"Will you teach me to play the guitar?" This filmmaker asked the song writer. "I would like to try an artform that is more supportive of incomplete thoughts."

The song on the radio by Boxer Rebellion called Diamonds is like a million endings in a row. Do you know what i mean? The musical phrasing sounds like its about to end over and over again from the moment it begins. "What is that called? Give me words for that" the filmmaker begged the song writer.

"Make a shot list of your lyrics," the songwriter told his students. "Think of it like a film. what are you revealing with each scene?" "We use each other's words" thought the filmmaker, writing him into her next story. "My score is like an unreliable narrator, it lies but you know its lying."

Toothbrushes cats and airconditioners today

My cat sleep in seemingly arbitrary spots around the house.
She sleeps sometimes in my bed which makes sense because my bed is the most comfortable. But she also sleeps on the floor at the bottom of the stairs in a part of the house that is not warmer or colder or closer to food or in any other way more apparently special than any other part of the house. I like to think that she sleeps there because that is where it smells most like us. Im not sure if this is really the case but its possible. Theres a big closest nearby which could possibly be a cause for a smell consolidation.
I dont know what our house smells like but i assume it smells like us and i assume Mookie, the cat, likes to be reminded by our smell that we are us and she belongs to us. I think she must like us because we brush her and let her outside where she can play with chickens and lie in the sun. In the last place she lived she lived always inside a small apartment that smelled like books. Which is a good smell. I bet we sort of smell like books too. We have a lot of books here. Also toast. and tea and onions in olive oil and also just skin i spose. My dad used to smell like bananas because he ate them a lot and then left the peels in his car where they became the perfume of the car which seeped into him and so he smelled like them.
Architecture plans get old looking more quickly than other sorts of paper i think. My dad is in the next room reading ancient looking large rectangles of plans which are the width of his arm span. He holds them up with his arms spread in order to read them and then when he arms get tired he drapes them over his knees. He's sitting on the couch. In the whole downstairs is hissing with air conditioner noises and the only other noise is this keyboard and the thwacking of wide architecture paper plans as he shakes them open. Theres a fan over my head but i cant differentiate its hiss from the general hiss. Now the sink has turned on in the bathroom and my mother is brushing her teeth I am in the kitchen. I wonder if she is using my toothbrush. Sometimes i think that even though we have four toothbrushes, one for each of us, we sometimes get confused and use each others so i get these passive aggressive ideas to throw away my own toothbrush to let whoever is using it know that it is mine and now gone and they were mistakenly using it and now they should go back to the toothbrush cup and find the one that is actually theirs. But then i would have no toothbrush. And maybe then i would have to result to sneakily using one of theirs and then i would be a hypocrite.