Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Storagepocalypse

I've moved a few inches back from the brink. Being productive is, for me, a much needed salve on the self inflicted wounds on my psyche. Why is it so easy to navigate ourselves into negativity but damn near impossible to change course to positivity? Circumstances devolve into chaos quickly in my brain.Well, maybe not chaos but uncertainty at the very least. And so, I've put on my productive pants. They're a bit snug but they accentuate all the right things.

Shuttling boxes and canisters full of my life (and all its ephemera and detritus) back and forth from apartment to small ass car to storage to new place has been a practice in meditation. I understand why people do mundane tasks as a form of reflection. I thought the other day as I rolled up a small mountain of clothing, piece by piece about the stone walkway that leads up Montserrat and I had a billion and one ideas and thoughts that branched out to even more ideas. At the very least, productivity awakens my brain to the myriad things I can and will do.

A word about self storage facilities: they creep me out. Ironically enough, I become suspicious of what lies behind the sliding metal doors of each compartment. Also, each time I drive up to my storage facility, it is empty of all cars, but there are always people in there! How did they get there? Rows and rows of silent, florescent lit hallways inexplicably lead me to think of something sinister. I've run into a few fellow stuff-storers and it is always awkward for some reason. We squeeze past each other down the narrow hallways, eyes averted. WHAT ARE WE HIDING?
In my case, I'm "hiding" my entire life apart from the bare essentials. However, I'm reasonably certain everyone else is hiding large steel drums of dissolving body parts or enormous pallets full of cash from their meth businesses.

My neighbors.
Everytime I press the big green button that allows me entrance to the building I think of the ever present dystopian future which captures our current zeitgeist. I can't help it. I think about bands of hastily formed alliances who take over the outer perimeter of the storage facility, 1st floor vs. 2nd floor and who controls the vending machines at the end of the hallways?? Why are there vending machines there? Why do I suddenly feel the need to get roller skates with lights on them and forage for water in a wasteland?

If you can name this film, we are meant to know each other.

So far, considering the storage facility reminds me of murder, suspicion, crime and the end of the world, I'm going to say I'm projecting just a wee bit onto a poor, bland, unsuspecting Eastern bloc of a building. I suppose there are worse scapegoats. 

5 comments:

  1. They're creepy, I agree. And the perfect settings for dystopias. Jeff's pinball machine is in storage now, out of state even, so who knows what it's getting up to?

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    1. The people who live in the storage facility might be playing it.

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  2. No, the worst SVU storage facility episode was the one with the rows and rows of little league hats, a chair, a box of tissues, and...a pump bottle of hand lotion.

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  3. It is called "Quarry." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0629710/

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