I find it sort of
amusing that I continue to make day logs despite the fact that I feel as though I'm at a point in my life where my days could not get any less eventful. But I imagine days filled with
nothing often lend to nights filled with thought.
My last remaining friend in Boston for the summer left this morning for Virginia and will not come back until we both return again to school in the fall. I am now officially completely alone for the next week, while I wait for time to pass and my life to begin again. Theoretically, I should not be waiting, but studying abstract mathematical applications and doing research on G.K. Chesterton. However, I find it easier to vegetate through most of the day and dream through most of the night while helplessly awake.
Despite the newfound absence of all of my summer companions, I have made a new acquaintance. His name is Sweet Pea. Sweet pea is the cockroach that has kindly decided to keep my company, most often on my desk browsing through my music and literature collections. A friend suggested I name him so as to feel more comfortable with his presence. For the sake of my own sanity, I pretend Sweet Pea is the only other resident of this two bedroom apartment and that he is not, as my very helpful friend put it, one of millions of Sweet Peas living in the walls. This task is made simpler by the fact that I have never seen Sweet Pea with his buddies and have yet to put on an off-screen production of Joe's Apartment. However, I must admit I often like to fantasize about him hunting and gathering to feed his children and ever-pregnant wife.
Although I have yet to outright aid in the procreation of the Pea family, I cannot bring myself to kill my dear, frequently visiting friend. This is not because I am afraid of the tiny creature, or because I enjoy the sincerity with which I can hum "La Cookaracha" (forgive my spelling,I took French) every time he makes an appearance, but despite the 1400 dollars a month I pay to live here, I don't feel as though I have more of a right to exist in this apartment than he does.
I tend to ask myself if this is because I was raised as a Hindu and cannot shake the idea that he is perhaps the reincarnate of some poor soul that did wrong in his life. But after considering this notion I often wonder if that is the case, then is it my duty to end this miserable existence of his so that he may proceed onto the next? Is it that I am at heart a Jain? Do I have an inherent need to practice ahimsa? I have to admit, being aware of the presence of Sweet Pea in my apartment, and hoping never to find his little body crushed underneath my shoes, I often feel the urge to "sweep before I walk".
As a student of biology, I can never get over the intricate complexity of Sweet Pea's body. I'm always amazed at how the powdered iced tea I neglected to wipe off the counter could have indirectly made that creature's frame, and heart, and brain, and the little creepy feelers that come out of his head that he points at me while emphasizing the blank look in his eyes that keeps me unsettled.
Is it that I've grown an affection for the little hoodlum that very rudely tries to steal my juice multiple times a day?
Am I that lonely that I will not kill something so incapable of conversing, because I will take whatever companionship I can get?
Do I secretly appreciate the fact that my dear Sweet Pea has taken a tour of my underwear drawer because I long to have that sort of intimacy with other creatures in my life?
Am I being extremely inconsiderate to the people who will move into my apartment in a week and a half by not calling someone to come in and inflict mass genocide upon the Pea family?
Despite the fact that cockroaches aren't known to carry disease, is it hygenic to live so symbiotically with a species that lives off my garbage?
Perhaps these are not generally life's most profoundly unanswered questions, but taking into account my own minimal Sweet Pea-esque existence in relation to so many other things in the universe, tonight I give them my time and consideration.