06.30.2003 - 12:03 p.m.

I cleaned my fish tank when I moved. It had been so clogged with algae that I ended up trashing the filter system. The fish were fine; I�ve had the same immortal set of zebra danios since I started the tank four years ago, and I�ll probably still have them when I die. Yesterday I went to Walmart to stock up: new filters and airstones, some airline that wasn�t green on the inside, some neon tetra because they looked healthy even in the store tank. I also bought ghost shrimp to help clean, which I�ve never done before. I�ve always bought algae-eaters or snails. The shrimp seem to be territorial. One stays on or near the castle, another by bridge. The third has set himself the task of border patrol; either there isn�t enough territory for three shrimp to claim, or maybe they are different sexes, and one side is supposed to want to wander. In any case, they are fascinating to watch, when you can find them. They clean with delicate, finicky motions, and their food traces out their transparent inner mysteries.

My room, my entire apartment for that matter, is not as ordered as my tank. We need to buy more common-area furniture; the cable won�t work until some time next week; despite the growing pile of broken-down cardboard, there are still boxes scattered around my room, partially emptied, gaping next to piles of their former contents.

I find myself setting up countertops with designed disorder. (Let me arrange the soap, the contact bottle, the lotion just so, but I�ll leave my hairbrush at an angle, too far from the edge of the sink.) I pick at my boxes and piles, and I spend too long dressing the window with sheers and thumbtacks. I think I am trying to force it to seem lived-in, because so far it seems so empty, artificial, as if the ceilings were windows for some larger being watching me, as if I were the ghost going through the finicky motions of arranging candles in my premade habitat.

But, I have a master bedroom for the first time in my entire life. And my fishtank is perfectly clean.

-stonebridge

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