To my Robber:
I'm having trouble having any compassion for you. While you did a tidy job breaking in through our bedroom window, leaving only a dusty handprint where you caught your balance as you climbed over the ledge, you left much of my life in ruins.
You think you did well, stealing $2000 worth of my belongings (and hundreds of dollars worth of Jay's). But you stole much more from me: the calm of mind to fully absorb the challenges and issues presented during my "encounter tour" with a series of Palestinian leaders and children in Bethlehem, not to mention the space to process the beauty and open-heartedness I cultivated on my subsequent two day trip to a large forest full of drumming, hugging, praying, singing hippies at the joyously communal "Rainbow" gathering.
My laptop was a good find, but, incidentally, it was more than a monetary loss for me. You robbed me of time: a year and a half of un-backed-up data on the hard drive that, even as I write, is being erased: poetry I was preparing for publication, recipes I liked, hundreds of photos of friends and places I've connected with, my week to week schedule and appointments, not to mention weeks of work on graduate school application essays that I had almost completed before my parents arrive this weekend.... You robbed me of my innocence.
It was smart to take my backpack -- perfect for carrying my iPod speakers, and Jay's iPod, though I doubt our printer fit into it. But you wasted some crucial carrying space by leaving my Hebrew study book within, the one that I depend on in both ulpan and tutorials, with all my homework for the past few months neatly filled out, lesson by lesson. I can't even begin to figure out why you took the shoulder bag that Jay bought me in Norway; it isn't worth so much money. Of course it was beautiful: entirely stitched in vivid colors. I guess you have good taste, in addition to an excellent eye for valuable objects.
The word "violated" doesn't even begin to describe the way my upset stomach wakes me up at night when I hear strange sounds, and know that our missing keys grant you complete access to our apartment until our locks are changed (and even afterward with the scaffolding outside our windows during the endless construction on our building, the construction workers who know our comings and goings, and the ladders that are laying around).
An hour after we put down our bags and noticed all the cabinets in the house were open, and our toaster oven had somehow arrived on our kitchen table, the police came and found your fingerprints all over the bedroom window -- more precisely, the marks of gloved fingers, minus the actual prints. I've since wiped off the black powder they used to try to trace your fleshly signature. I guess all I can do now is try to wipe your handprint off my wall with some bleach.
You think you did well, stealing $2000 worth of my belongings (and hundreds of dollars worth of Jay's). But you stole much more from me: the calm of mind to fully absorb the challenges and issues presented during my "encounter tour" with a series of Palestinian leaders and children in Bethlehem, not to mention the space to process the beauty and open-heartedness I cultivated on my subsequent two day trip to a large forest full of drumming, hugging, praying, singing hippies at the joyously communal "Rainbow" gathering.
My laptop was a good find, but, incidentally, it was more than a monetary loss for me. You robbed me of time: a year and a half of un-backed-up data on the hard drive that, even as I write, is being erased: poetry I was preparing for publication, recipes I liked, hundreds of photos of friends and places I've connected with, my week to week schedule and appointments, not to mention weeks of work on graduate school application essays that I had almost completed before my parents arrive this weekend.... You robbed me of my innocence.
It was smart to take my backpack -- perfect for carrying my iPod speakers, and Jay's iPod, though I doubt our printer fit into it. But you wasted some crucial carrying space by leaving my Hebrew study book within, the one that I depend on in both ulpan and tutorials, with all my homework for the past few months neatly filled out, lesson by lesson. I can't even begin to figure out why you took the shoulder bag that Jay bought me in Norway; it isn't worth so much money. Of course it was beautiful: entirely stitched in vivid colors. I guess you have good taste, in addition to an excellent eye for valuable objects.
The word "violated" doesn't even begin to describe the way my upset stomach wakes me up at night when I hear strange sounds, and know that our missing keys grant you complete access to our apartment until our locks are changed (and even afterward with the scaffolding outside our windows during the endless construction on our building, the construction workers who know our comings and goings, and the ladders that are laying around).
An hour after we put down our bags and noticed all the cabinets in the house were open, and our toaster oven had somehow arrived on our kitchen table, the police came and found your fingerprints all over the bedroom window -- more precisely, the marks of gloved fingers, minus the actual prints. I've since wiped off the black powder they used to try to trace your fleshly signature. I guess all I can do now is try to wipe your handprint off my wall with some bleach.
posted by Adam Lavitt at 12:14 PM
1 Comments:
Oh my gosh! Adam, I am so, so, sorry.
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