Where I Sleep

The place where I sleep is a large apartment split into to many small sections shared by five young students. We all used to be engineering students. Now they study engineering and I study economics. My space in the apartment is large enough to hold all of my possessions. There is even a balcony attached to the bedroom where I enjoy spending small portions of my day reading. Our apartment is in the downtown area of one of the largest cities in the United States, San Jose. This city is an interesting combination of urban sprawl, human ingenuity, unequal distribution of wealth, sudden growth, bizarre diversity and stagnation. From my balcony I watch drug addicts and vagabonds wander in the alley below. Children play inside the dumpsters where I dispose of my garbage. My neighbors play ping pong for hours in their backyard between sporadic fights. I like to watch the thugs drink bud light every night under the carport of the adjacent apartment building. They like to whistle when I pass them with my girlfriend. Sometimes I watch the sun melt into the western horizon and sometimes I stay inside and close the blinds. This is the place where I sleep at night and this is the city I have called home for the last four years.

Heteronomous: Subject to external controls and impositions.

Neurosis: A mental and emotional disorder that affects only part of the personality, is accompanied by a less distorted perception of reality than in a psychosis, does not result in disturbance of the use of language, and is accompanied by various physical, physiological, and mental disturbances (as visceral symptoms, anxieties or phobias)