I'm at the apartment of a guy with whom I arranged, on craigslist or somesuch, to purchase some electronic components, I believe some strange transformers and unusual old power transistors. He lives in a townhouse, very narrow with many floors, and I meet him down in the basement, where is apparently his electronics lab. He's working on some other project with another guy, and indicates that he is going to do something else first before attending to me. I say that I've come a long way, he should be able to just finish our transaction first, and he complies.

We start up the stairs through various rooms, which are terribly messy. In one room I see a chicken bone on the floor, infested with ants. I think he's done it on purpose to clean the bone, as has been done for museum preservation in the past, but I think maybe I should warn him that he shouldn't do that in his house, or they'll never go away. But I say nothing, and we pass through the room to the next staircase.

At the top of several sets of stairs is the entrance where I came in, and on the last couple stairs are a couple more large pieces of dropped food, which I didn't see before, but we've disturbed the various other messes that were covering them up. They are covered with squirming maggots (like the thing I saw in the garbage the other day), and it's really disturbing. Especially because in the next room, there are small toddlers crawling around on the floor. I'm not sure where his apartment ends; it seems that there are open windows between the adjacent apartments, so you can see many rooms on every side. The children, along with their mother, appear to be Mexican, but I wonder if they are his family.

He seems to notice the messes too. He doesn't say anything, but rather distracts us to the business at hand. He puts on his coat from near the door and we get the parts from somewhere.

I think how terrible it would be to live in such an apartment, how crowded it feels with such small rooms, low ceilings, and so intimate with the neighbors. Not to mention the messes.