{"id":1961,"date":"2006-10-22T17:21:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-22T17:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/2006\/10\/22\/scraps-collected-from-the-floor\/"},"modified":"2006-10-22T17:21:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-22T17:21:00","slug":"scraps-collected-from-the-floor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/2006\/10\/22\/scraps-collected-from-the-floor\/","title":{"rendered":"scraps collected from the floor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The polished cement floors and tall white walls of the The Dance Center foyer give an impression of being professionally vacant and irrepressibly busy, all at the same time. I like it. The desk I sit at faces a long glass wall that I watch the street through, its beveled edges act as rainbow prisms on sunny days. I am mostly here in the evening, however, as the dinner-time crowd travel undistractedly past in long black coats and oversize hoop earrings. Sunday nights are traditionally unexciting. <\/p>\n<p>Occasionally a man comes in who looks homeless, long scruffy gray hair, a bright yellow rain jacket with a small hole over one elbow. He collects all the new reading material that&#8217;s accumulated over the week, pamphlets, brochures, upcoming events, and sits quietly reading them at the table, one after another, until either he is finished or it is time to close. I don&#8217;t mind, it keeps him warm and he seems inoffensive. I only wonder what he does with them after. A favorite idea is that of a small cooking fire flaring in the dark back doorway of a rich downtown hotel.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>Jenn&#8217;s party last night, I felt like I&#8217;d wandered into three years ago. I wanted to be wearing something improbable, a snakeskin dress, a PVC corset, something with unlikely handfuls of feathers, just to put myself off balance, to rid myself of the feeling that I will never escape this place, that I will always return to these same people year after year in these similar places. That I can&#8217;t evolve or forget.<\/p>\n<p>Even dropping by Oliver&#8217;s birthday party on Saturday after going to see The Prestiege did not feel so alienating. Of course, I&#8217;d made sure to arrive as late as possible to ensure that the guest of honour would have been steadily drinking himself into inoffensiveness since five in the evening, and I&#8217;m certain it helped. That and Mark dragging himself out of bed at two a.m. to threaten making me dinner after to fix how I might be feeling. <\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/science\/nature\/6033407.stm\">This year&#8217;s global ecological debt day,<\/a> which fell early on October 9th, symbolizes the day of the year when people&#8217;s demands exceeded the Earth&#8217;s ability to supply resources and absorb the demands placed upon it. This means that it would take the Earth 15 months to regenerate what was consumed already this year.<\/p>\n<p>My ecological footprint, last time I delved into this, turned out to be surprisingly small, (minus that I live in a first world country), so omitting some regrettable things, like not being able to shop organically or fair-trade at two in the morning, I think I&#8217;m doing okay. What&#8217;s your excuse?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The polished cement floors and tall white walls of the The Dance Center foyer give an impression of being professionally vacant and irrepressibly busy, all at the same time. I like it. The desk I sit at faces a long glass wall that I watch the street through, its beveled edges act as rainbow prisms &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/2006\/10\/22\/scraps-collected-from-the-floor\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;scraps collected from the floor&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[131,792,923,922],"class_list":["post-1961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-jenn","tag-oliver","tag-the-big-bad-wolf","tag-the-dance-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}