got to keep movin', keep movin' on

i haven't taken a bath in over four years. sure, i've showered. but i haven't filled up a tub and submerged myself in water in a while. I haven't had a bathroom that had a tub since my first apartment on woodman ave. i shared the bathroom with a girl who spent three months in japan dancing topless. when i first moved in to the apartment, when i was so new to los angeles, i was reading franny and zooey for the fourth time and there is that long scene where one of them is smoking and taking a bath and talking to their mom. so i used to take baths and smoke and read franny and zooey. when you take a bath and the door is closed and the air is damp and fuzzy the world beyond the bathroom door seems to slip away.

tonight i took a bath. the drain had no stopper so i had to plug it with socks and then set an unopened jar of ragu pasta sauce. the sauce was placed on the socks to keep the drain good and stopped. the pasta sauce had been bought nearly a year ago with plans of being domestic and making things for dinner. but it was still put to good use. i needed that bath. there were no cigarettes and i was using socks and a jar of ragu to stop the drain and i was half reading slouching towards bethlehem more listening to the sweet factory, but with the bathroom door closed the world beyond still slipped away. and i wanted that.

on saturday i was dancing in the big studio at edge. the studio has a large window on one side that looks out north to the hills and the hollywood sign, large and white, and i remembered standing in the same spot when i was fourteen during my first trip to la thinking that all of this was so cool. that i could dance in the studio with all these phenomenal teachers and look out the window and see this big sign that had all this hope and mystery attached to it. the hollywood sign is over-used in movies and as a tourist attraction but there is something attractive about it, even though isnt' sort of an eye sore. anyway, this paragragh wasnt' supposed to be about the hollywood sign but about standing in the dance studio nearly ten years later and feeling the same. and finding comfort in the way some things don't change, the feeling inside my body standing in that studio was the same. that's nice. maybe that feeling is kinda like the hollywood sign.

i guess it's just a time when everything is changing and i am taking sentimental comfort in the things that stay the same. it's like knowing that i'll always have somewhere to return to.