After what seemed like longer than it should take, the furniture
is in its place and boxes are unpacked and this rented house is starting to
emerge, looking like something that could be mine for a while. It's old and
creaky, drafty and a bit like the slow cousin who comes to the family reunion
and stands there by the appetizers all day, quiet and in mismatched clothes,
next to her more stylish relatives. There are these cute renovated houses that
surround me, nice paint jobs, manicured lawns. I'm trying to not have lawn
envy. I've never had lawn envy. In fact, all of this is new: this
living-in-a-house thing. I joke that I moved every year with a new lease, but
truly I've lived on the Upper West Side, the West Village, the East Village,
Brooklyn, Hoboken, Jersey City Heights, Van Vorst Park area and downtown Jersey
City, with a stint sleeping on a couch in SoHo. All apartments. Some lofts,
some studios, 2 3-bedroom pre-war apartments (once, I rented the "maids"
quarters for $400, which was teensy and had a toilet in the closet). I've had
plants. I had a backyard on Bright Street that I did nothing with. And I
gardened in my Jersey City studio. But now I have a lawn. A front and back
lawn. I don't own a mower and quite honestly, I'm not investing in one because
these 2 very nice young men were leaf-blowing my neighbors' house yesterday and
I waved them down and got myself on their circuit of lawn care. Of course, they
are songwriters (you can't spit here...kind of like in NYC everyone's an
actor/playwright). Halloween was humbling. I was unloading boxes and had
forgotten that it was Halloween. I've never had trick or treaters in my NYC-New
Jersey places and I don't have kids and I don't particularly love candy (although
I'm a sucker for candy corn and those little orange pumpkins with the green
tops). Evening came and my street exploded with witches and ghosts and vampires
and skeletons and aliens and Harry Potters and Super Heroes and princesses and
fairies. The folks across the street had decorated and so had a lot of other of
my neighbors, while I--lameass newly moved in citygirl--had to turn the front
porch lights off as I had nothing to offer. Sadly, a few stragglers would knock
on my door and I'd sheepishly call out "I'm sorry. I don't have
anything." Of course, I could have driven over to the store and bought
stuff, but I was awash in boxes and books and files.
This is not about a couch.
Once I unpacked, I realized I had a load of borrowed furniture
and not one comfortable, lie-around-and-watch-a-movie couch, that would pull
out or fold down if a friend came by. Just my grandmother's funky old antique
that's nice to sit on, but not so comfortable to spread out on, and certain
nothing anyone would "crash" on, and being alone here, I think I'm
open to the "crashing". So first thing -- I went and bought a couch.
But sleepers are extraordinarily ugly and bulky and really, in the end, not so
comfortable, and futons remind me of college, so I got one of those click-clack
pull down couches that's like a futon but looks more like a couch. Its super
comfortable, but quite honestly, I think its pretty ugly. The dirt cheap ones
were ugly AND uncomfortable. So I went with something that was semi-ugly, not
miserably pathetic, but super comfortable and won't take up the entire room if
pulled down. So it encourages use. I'm doing my best to find some kind of
"design" sense, although I feel a bit like a post-grad with a
mish-mash of things. I had a great design sense when I shared a house with a
man with a shared love of Mission and Arts & Crafts, but he also had a good
job and furnishing a place as a couple is vastly more fun and easier than
trying to do this alone, on an artist's budget. I'm hoping the collection of
Indian print pillows I have thrown on the couch hide its warts. Like I said:
its comfortable.
I know this is silly. Wasting the last half hour writing about a
couch. Or furniture. Or a new house. But its all new. This putting-things-in-their-righteous-place-in-a-semblance-of-a-newly-discovered-or-long-recovering-aesthetic-while-trying-not-to-freak-out-that-I-don't-yet-have-it-all-together
thing. I did heave a huge sigh of relief when I got rid of the crazy
room--the room someone had painted dark brown and bright blue with a tree,
branches of blue bleeding into the brown and visa-versa (yep. seriously). I
painted it a nice neutral sandstone/adobe. And then sighed a pleasant, calming,
ah ha. And unpacked my books into my new shelves I bought cheaply, and put
things away. Put things on the walls. Lit some candles. Sat on my new couch.
Poured a glass of wine. And proceeded to ....
...cry.
Which was a surprise. 5 days of figuring out where things go, of
buying what I lacked and reshuffling what I had. Excited to see the whole
picture emerge. And when it did, the wellspring opened. Which took me by
surprise. But it was brief and I got some lyrics out of it (a total cliche of
the songwriter blubbering, tear-stains on the composition book, guitar in hand,
singing melodies through the sniffles and sobs). And I let it pass. And this
morning, I woke up and sat in my ugly couch, drinking my coffee watching MSNBC
and felt, still, a bit out of sorts, but felt rather ok about being unsettled,
still. The couch isn't perfect, but its what I could afford and it works for
now. The house isn't perfect. The lyrics I wrote last night certainly are not
only not perfect, they kind of suck. But I wrote them and they're mine.
I've been writing for a year in this blog about segues.
Transitions and metamorphoses. This is about life and art and self and study
and love and loss. This is about embracing the moment when you get what you
need, even if its not exactly what you thought it would look like. This about
having what's good for right now, rather than what you think you might want
eventually. This is about letting the grief come and go like a wave and not
allowing it to define. And having a pot of soup on and a bottle of wine and a
good couch for sleeping so that this space can embrace someone else who needs
it.
What I hear most often from these creaky walls is the distant
sound of a train. I don't know where it is, where its coming from or where its
going, but there's nothing I love so much as the sound of a train. It takes me
backward to memory and forward to dreaming. It wakes me and lulls me to sleep.
Like I said, this is not about a couch.
THE RAILWAY TRAIN.
I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step
Around a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of
roads;
And then a quarry pare
To fit its sides, and crawl
between,
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hill
And neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a star,
Stop -- docile and omnipotent --
At its own stable door.
(Emily Dickenson)
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