My father once told me that college students are the best people there are in the world because they make sure to exercise regularly and eat a healthy diet; they learn every day to keep themselves sharp and interesting; college students socialize non-stop, creating lifelong friendships, valuing and connecting with each other, making love and building bonds while learning how to break them softly; and they learn how to meditate, find their spirituality either in their parents' religion, Buddhism, science, art and culture. The problem, my father always said, is once people start working (in America at least), they forget what life is all about, and they let their drive to make money in order to buy the freedom to stop working take over their lives, and altogether they stop taking care of their health, intellect, social life, emotions, and spirit. My father said that this was the big mistake of all Americans. My father told me that once I get a job, I need to remember to exercise, to eat right, to constantly learn new things like piano, French and whatever my intellectual curiosity proffered; to keep my friends and find new ones because humans have evolved to optimize in social circles of roughly 150 people, to never underestimate the power and futility of love with another person and to practice kindness, and to finally appreciate nature, list five things I am grateful for every day, and never stop my artistic vocation of writing (so often times I would write with Jack, and Jack would write with me, and I would love him all the more.)
Jack eventually got the itch to write again, and so he ran to find paper in the main office room on the second floor, where thankfully he found eight giant stacks of blank paper and ten packets of office pens. He could write for a couple years if he had to, and Jack told me otherwise if he ran out of paper he would write across the walls of every floor with a kitchen knife. His passion for writing inspired me, and for an hour or two I would write alongside him in that stranger's home study room, until my hand hurt and I had to go upstairs to do something else (Travis's favorite thing to do was look over the ocean on the roof and think, and sometimes I would join him, sitting in silence as the crashing waves lulled my shoulders into a relaxed descent). Jack on the other hands, could continue to write from dusk until dawn and wouldn't even know the sun went down unless I came downstairs into the study to tell him I was going to bed, and then insist he come to bed with me but then have to strip off my clothes and dance between him and his papers so as to distract and persuade him to give me the attention a boyfriend owed his girlfriend. He normally succumbed to my request the moment I pulled my hair tie and my hair fell down to my naked back. (Boys are so easily persuaded, aren't they?)
I sometimes went up to the fourth floor by the open balcony and the kitchen to find Brett either staring out the glass doors to think about Brenda, or doing pushups and lifting gym weights he found in the third-floor home gym in order to blow off steam and not think about Brenda. She honestly might dead underneath the ocean right now, and that was both sad to him and infuriating because he had still never convinced her that he was right and she was wrong on certain topics like if hamburgers were unhealthy even after he went to the gym and craved an In-N-Out burger. Brett ended up showing me how to do a long list of push up styles, including the traditional pushup, which he said I was bad at and needed to practice everyday, which slightly pissed me off, and he continued on with introducing me to the wide-grip pushup, close-grip pushup, clap pushup, one-leg pushup, dead-stop pushup, eccentric pushup, spider-man pushup, one-armed incline pushup, decline pushup and incline pushup. Afterwards I must admit I felt like Wonder Woman. To congratulate ourselves, Brett and I shared a mug of French Silk ice cream, a chocolate ice cream with chocolate chunks and silky white cream layers. I wished we could eat more, because it was delicious and I was starving, but the six of us agreed to ration our food supplies for the fear of running out of food altogether before help arrives. I must say it feels like we are like poor German civilians after the ravages of World War I, living off morning porridge and cabbage soup like my dad said his grandmother's family had to do during that time. "Always eat your oatmeal," she would order him to do ever since, and my father has eaten his plain oatmeal for breakfast every morning since out of fear of my great grandmother's strict German accent. I found it particularly funny the way he used to order him to have fun the one day she babysat him. "You 'vil 'ave fun zis eenstant!"
It's interesting how adaptive humans are. As I started to exercise with Brett every day, learn from all the books Travis had memorized with his photographic memory. He would teach me things like how the methods of CRISPR, the latest and greatest gene editing tool that might exterminate and alter much of our diseases and birth defects in the future. I then would have endless debates with George about politics, mostly about liberal versus conservative topics, and though his opinions seemed unmovable, I could tell his conservative outlook had the potential of becoming more liberal as long as I continued fighting him with my more caring, feminine perspective. As for love and emotional support, when Jack wasn't writing, we were either making time to cut a slice of apple and cheese and eat them together in our own little private room on the floor with a scented Pumpkin Spice candle between us on the floor, and then we would kiss and make love and forget the world around us was the mess it was. Jack made my life a fantasy land no matter the external circumstances, and I believe that means I love him.
As for my spirituality, although Craig was turning into a recluse and would hide himself in his room designated across the hall on the third floor as well, he made the conscious effort to only drink the lightest beer to keep himself from regaining his strong alcoholic addictions, and busied himself through God's prayer. He had found in another library on the second floor across the hall from the office study, and the shelves were lined with endless texts. One shelf was designated for the bible, the five books of Moses, an elaborate thirty-pound Torah scroll hidden away in ornate curtained-off cabinet made of acacia wood lined with gold Hebrew texts. He also discovered a Quran written in Aramaic, as well as Hindu scriptures including Bhagavad Gita and Agamas, and even found Buddhist scriptures called the Tipitaka written in the ancient Indian language Pali. Thankfully all of these texts had English translations either on every other line or boxed on the left-sided pages so Craig could read, understand and elevate his being. He found a great calm in all this, and when I came to study with him each day in the library by ourselves and smell the light vanilla candle he had lit for every occasion, I must admit my eyes would lift off the pages as he read aloud to me in his soothing, rhythmic wondrous voice, and I felt a spiritual connection to him that made me see him with a sudden golden glow, and when he lifted his calm eyes up to me to ask if there was something wrong, I merely shook my head staring into his big bedroom eyes, and said I just lost my place, and preferred to listen. Our eyes would lock for a moment and then he dropped his nose into the spine of his bible and continue reading something about sheep. The world couldn't be all that bad when you had a library, a boy, and a heavenly father looking down on you, keeping you safe.
We eventually found out that the owners of this house were retired doctors who owned several hospitals and prison chains, and were beginning to initiate a full-on war on public education, to privatize everything so they could increase their real estate ownership from nine properties, to sixty-nine. They gave back heavily to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, and their son was one of the major engineer developers of the printer laser that could detect and shoot deadly backyard mosquitoes in the communities of Africa. They might have been Jewish for we did find a Hanukkiah in the library. Possibly they were practicing, but we could not tell. Whatever their nature, good or bad, their house was the only shelter protecting us from the cruel nature of the outside world, and it was saving our lives.