Rolling Hill Pines Apt. Complex

It was a Saturday when it happened. I remembered because I had nothing to do that day but smoke cigarettes from the third story balcony and make constellations from the butts that littered the grass. A group of people arrived at our apartment complex; a non-descript number of them, somewhere between 11 and 54 professionally dressed grown folks lined up outside. I assumed the suits and fine dresses were to put people at ease.

All at once they spoke in unison to the tenants of Rolling Pine Hills Apartment complex located off of Route 27 in historic Mill Hill, NJ:

“People of Rolling Pine Hills Apartment complex located off of Rt 27 in historic Mill Hill New Jersey; please leave your domiciles and converse with us. We appreciate your attention away from your digital cable, internet porn and private drinking and assure you we will not take much of your precious leisure time,”

I was excited. Something like this so rarely happens and finally I could meet and greet my neighbors. Publicly, I wanted good relations with them so that I would not have another incident like the one that forced my mother and I to move from the Hidden Creek Village Apartment complex right off Route 99 in cheap Little Egg Harbor. I added another star to the grass and went inside to tell my mother the news.

However, she had beaten me to the punch, and was putting her shoes on as I opened the door.

“Did you hear?” I asked.

“Yes, now go downstairs.”

Looking at the other apartment doors open I tried to make eye contact with my neighbors and give them my trademarked smiled but to no avail. They stared at the group of strangers gathered and made no attempt to act in a neighborly way. It was Hidden Creek Valley all over again.

Most of the tenants gathered on the parking lot, some with baseball bats, some with erections and some with children. Juxtaposed with the group of professionals they looked quite shabby.

“Good people of this fine community, we mean you no harm” said the professionals.

Bats were lowered and erections went flaccid. Children remained the same.
“We have come to your fine domiciles for two reasons. First: to convince you, using Einstein’s theory of special relativity that you are all beings made of pure light and that you have all collectively manufactured the physical world around us through the selling of kidneys and the flexing of calf muscles.”

Some wise ass shouted: “I’ve been trying to tell them that for years!”

The crowed awkwardly laughed and agreed quietly to each other, recounting particular times the wise ass would sneak into their bedrooms while they were at work and leave informative, but tacky, pamphlets on their kitchen tables.

“We could bore you with the details but you already know this” said the professionals.

“Secondly, we would like your help with a search we have been conducting. Using the most high-tech physics available on the free market we have shot enough atoms at other atoms to determine the nature of the origins of our universe. We have discovered that it was a collision of a toy lightsaber manufactured as merchandising item from the Star Wars universe (of whose origins we are also investigating) and a large 1500 watt Microwave oven.

My mother gasped. The crowd gasped.

“After consulting numerous Ouija boards, we have come to the conclusion that the answer to the meaning of life can be found here. We have searched many communities of beings of pure light, and this group assembled before us is by far the brightest. We humbly ask your permissions to perform a search for these unmoved movers among both the people and possessions of Rolling Pine Hills apartment complex.

My mother began to cry, and I started another cigarette.

It was Hidden Creek Valley all over again.


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Listening to: Cables by Big Black