MIchael Colbert

I’ve taken to sitting on the balcony. Right before North Carolina shut down, I went to Target and bought porch chairs and a table on sale. The balcony peers over the dumpster in the parking lot, so it had never seemed worth investing in before. Plus, the summers here are too hot, the risk of tornadoes and hurricanes too high.

From the balcony, the apartment complex unfolds. Pick-up trucks and SUVs rumble through. A woodpecker has started whacking an adjacent tree. Every day, a neighbor opens the hood of a black Jeep, repairing, tinkering. At first, I’d get annoyed when another car parked perpendicular to the Jeep, blocking entry to cars. Now, the waiting feels like some exercise in mindfulness. There’s something healthful in watching somebody else find joy.

Which feels important because I’ve become beholden to lists. I’ve always been one to make lists. In our COVID time at home, I lean into them even harder to assert control. 

Books I finished today: Eye Level, Less, Interpreter of Maladies.

Things to keep busy: work out, reorganize my bookshelf, research how much water each of my plants requires, walk around my apartment community.

I walk a three-quarter mile loop several times a day, between to-do list items. Sometimes I call home, where my adult siblings have hunkered down with my parents, three cats, and a dog. Sometimes, I walk without my phone. All day is digital noise, Zoom class, happy hours with college friends who live across the country, even if we haven’t done this since our first year out. Now, we have to look after each other.

On my walks, neighbors on their porches watch me, unless their porches are vacant. Some have similar porch furniture and hanging plants. From the unit beside mine, a ginger cat spies on the parking lot. She hears the trucks rumble, watches downstairs neighbors invite friend after friend inside through slider doors. We see the same girl park her black BMW every day, another drop a bag of McDonald’s at a friend’s door, the man and his Jeep, tinkering, tinkering. I make lists of movies and books that recall this feeling: Goodbye to Berlin, Disturbia, except I’m watching others in plain sight, scopophilia without shame, observing community so maybe it will feel like something concrete.

Sometimes, the lists overwhelm. I’ve read over twenty books since we entered quarantine, and each time I finish one, I make comments, mark it as read, cross it off three different lists. I make an effort to consolidate. I play The Sims, diving into a world where I orchestrate love affairs and vampire infections. The chaos of it spirits away hours at a time until I snap awake, snap shut my laptop, walk my loop again, again.

From my balcony, I watch neighbors greet each other, chatting from a distance or not. From my balcony, I speak with a neighbor who also greets everyone coming and going.

Each day, I make it through my lists: books to read, TV to watch, things to do. Watching others from the balcony, the lists loosen. The people beyond my balcony collect in my mind. These are other tenants, alone together, other people I will not know. Moments at a time, this feels okay. I leave my phone inside, my Sims sleeping on the hard drive. I feel the apartment complex humming all around me.