Jean Cocteau is my neighbor.
Jean Cocteau is a terrible neighbor to have,
especially if you’ve read any of Jean Cocteau’s stories or books.
I can’t say for a fact
that he was known for throwing loud and obtrusive parties,
but what I can say is that
the workings of Cocteau’s life
and the surroundings of Cocteau’s life
were all anchored, if it can be, in absurdity.
A lot of people read Jean Cocteau
looking for poetry,
and then they find absurdity.
I’m sure people who live absurdity and look for absurdity
and then find Cocteau
see it poetically.
I entered the game on a completely trite footstep.
I knew the name “Jean Cocteau” as an artist,
but was not familiar with any of his work.
Then I came under the spell of the French band Cocteau Twins,
only to then find out
that it was not incomprehensible because it was in French.
Rather, they were Scottish,
and it was always going to be incomprehensible,
no matter what the language was,
no matter whether I knew the words or not.
Liking a band
because of their eponymous heritage
is no dumber than wearing the T-shirt
of a band that you liked
because of one song that you heard on the radio.
Liking the artist that they were named after
is genuinely crazy.
· · ·
So, I read Cocteau,
the story that always stuck with me was that of the housewife
who constantly broke the windows in her kitchen,
much to the dismay of her husband.
Only to then see the man
who came to repair the windows
every time they were broken.
It was a bizarre and absurd abstraction
about love or para-love or illicit love,
but it was still a story about love.
It was a woman:
indifferent to the love of her husband,
and seeking the arms of a man,
who came to open and close her windows
metaphorically.
When I moved to the 23rd floor of this building,
I was unaware of my neighbors.
I knew I had neighbors.
I just didn’t know who they were.
Probably the least viable or functional radar
you could use to determine these things
were your ears –
to listen.
to hear if you could make out the sounds of people.
Nearly two-foot-thick concrete floors and walls
made it impossible.
So you have to have a spotting deck,
and that spotting deck was the elevator.
It was like a detective having a tail in front
and a tail behind a suspect.
If I got on the elevator going down
and there were people already on the elevator,
then I knew they lived upstairs.
If I got on the elevator at the ground floor
and saw people getting off at the floors below me,
then I knew that they lived below me.
If I got on the elevator at the ground floor
and saw that there were people
who were getting off on the same floor as me,
then I knew that they were here to make a delivery,
usually, laundry or food or sundry.
· · ·
My first real interaction
with my neighbors upstairs
came on Palm Sunday of the year 2023,
the same year as the floor that I lived on!
We awoke on Palm Sunday,
went to our balcony
to find leaves of palm
that had been flitted off a tree or more likely a plant
somewhere in the vicinity,
laying on the floor of my dirty balcony.
“What a fine gesture,” I thought,
“For the people upstairs,
to send such a pious message of peace on a day of forgiveness.”
The following year, 2024,
was a year with great rains and floods.
The city was flooded.
We were flooded,
stuck in our home,
battered by the wind on all sides
coming off the Gulf.
More debris flew in the air
and more debris was deposited
on the floor of my balcony.
This time, a well-used condom.
What a great sign!
Not exactly a sign of forgiveness
Nor in the belief that mankind would continue,
because that would not involve using a condom.
Rather, it was a sign that someone in the midst of a biblical-style battering,
that we were receiving from the elements,
and from cloud seeding,
decided he was going to have some fun!
(and didn’t want to have a baby nine months later.)
Good on him.
Then in 2025,
we had a different kind of battering.
On the last night of February, the 28th,
a new moon that night,
I was eating Frosted Flakes with orange juice
to make them extra sweet.
We heard the Doppler effect of a loud whistle,
and we felt the vibration of the loud impact,
and we saw the mushroom cloud
from a small munition.
that had gone off
about 1,000 feet away from where we lived.
I thought:
“This is probably one of the most interesting
Saturday nights that I’ve ever had.”
Not a Saturday night
where we’re going to be shedding palm leaves,
and not a Saturday night
where we’re going to be throwing condoms into the wind,
but instead, a Saturday night
where we’re going to go into a bomb shelter.
Everyone in the house did their best
to put on a brave face,
but there was the sound of the loud booms
going off all around us.
Eventually, we decided to say,
“F*ck it,”
and go back upstairs.
To say,
“If we’re going to die,
we’re going to die in our own beds,
drinking our own water and eating our own food.
Not like refugees or hostages in a basement!”
But those loud booms.
Good grief, those loud booms!
And that’s when I remembered the neighbors upstairs.
My neighbor upstairs was an engineer
who designed, of all things, windows.
And from that point forward,
every time we heard the loud boom
accompanying the rattle that we’d feel
when the drones and the missiles
were intercepted overhead,
instead of giving in to our enemy,
who were looking to make us feel scared,
I would rattle my fist at the woman upstairs
and say, “God damn you,
slamming your windows and your doors
closed like that.”
My son said,
“But Baba, why would she do that?
Why would she slam her door so hard?”
I said,
“It’s because her husband
is the engineer who makes the doors.
She has that much faith in them
that she slams them as hard as she can,
knowing that they will never break.”