I hadn't noticed the sound of water hitting my bare floor or even the sound of the rain until after I'd crawled out of bed, made my way down the loft stairs in the dark, and turned on a light. It was when I stepped in a wet area on the floor that I looked up and saw a bead of water fatten up on the edge of the ledge, release itself, and flatten on the wood at my feet. One, two, three, four, five—another one. I felt like a cartoon character putting pots underneath the two leaks, which amplified the sound and tinged it with a metal ring. It's not raining today, but I've got the pots standing on guard just in case.
The man who was helping me open my checking account at my new bank accidentally told me his boss uses a bank other than the one we were sitting in. I spent the majority of yesterday's lunch hour watching the man poke at the keyboard with one hand, click the wrong buttons repeatedly, and wave over his coworkers to help him process my information. (And today I watched my friend Lisa discover and fill out an online form that produced the same results in only 5 minutes.) I'm looking forward to when I finally get my ATM card, so I can stop walking through the bustling McDonald's, past the tables of bright balled up paper and greasy food, up the stairs and around the corner to use the discount ATM, which really isn't a deal at all.
***
Tonight I went to see a band called Soviet, made up of five people, three of whom played keyboards. Being there was like visiting the 80s, but as an adult. Lots of spiky, fringy hair, and a few turned-up collars. In a place like that, it's easy to be aware of two or three people who seem to create the atmosphere for the entire place. They may not be the most attractive or the most unusually dressed, but for some reason they stand out, and they give the impression that the show wouldn't be the same without them there. Of course, if they weren't there, you would never know it.
I didn't realize how loud the concert had been until I walked into my apartment. But suddenly my head is ringing.
It took stepping outside of it and back in again for it to feel completely natural and comfortable, for it to feel like a new pair of shoes that I've worn long enough that they've stopped giving me blisters. This morning I caught the 8 a.m. train to go to a meeting at the DC-branch of the organization I work for. Including the cab ride, I must've been underneath open sky a total of 8 minutes. During the meeting I actually forgot I'd changed cities; but in between the two were three hours, several bodies of water (on which I caught a glimpse a heavy-set man fishing in a jon boat), trees that weren't squared off by concrete, dilapidated row houses in Baltimore standing tall and skinny, factories billowing smoke, and an old black woman ambling up the street in Wilmington. It was on the subway ride home that I noticed my shoes had been domesticated.
It was cool and rainy yesterday when I walked through Brooklyn underneath my literal umbrella of isolation and sat on a muggy train decorated with brown prints of shoe bottoms. I was on my way to go to PS1, or Public School 1, the oldest public school in New York. It's no longer a school, but a gallery, and yesterday the area around it was thumping with beats manipulated by DJs. The outdoor dance floor was relatively empty at first but seemed to get more popular as the sky grew dimmer. No one really seemed to notice or care about the rain.
Stuart, Beau, and I would pick people to watch, point them out and give them names, and make guesses about them. One group, especially one guy in particular, I labeled "Fame," since he reminded me so much of Leroy from the movie. Lots of energy, and lots of different ethnic groups there, so many that it almost seemed unreal, like a manufactured commercial.
Most of the people were in their twenties, but there was one old white-haired man who strolled slowly and confidently through the crowd, extending his point-and-shoot camera into the air with one arm, snapping pictures of dancers and objects of interest. I watched him take a picture of a strange concrete creature embedded in the stairs.
I explored only a tiny, impressive corner of the gallery itself, which included the photographs of a man who, over the course of his life, chased rescue ambulances in order to take pictures of crime scenes, auto accidents, train wrecks, natural disasters, suicides. There was so much to see in each picture, and, again, I found myself making guesses about the people inside of the black-and-white rectangles, trapped inside their horrible moments.
***
The man who lives across the street from my building informed my roommates that the place where we live was once, in addition to a mortuary, a casket factory. In fact, when he was a little boy, he remembers peering into the basement windows just after the building had flooded, seeing caskets and bodies float by.
At this moment, I'm in that building, sitting at my computer underneath a caged window. My roommates Bil and Suran are having band practice, David is making his own spaghetti sauce, and Beau is hanging an ironing board on the back of his door. The building has changed duties.
None of it is really that big. Yesterday morning I left to catch the L train to go to work. Pulled off my headphones when I saw the confused crowd and heard the muffled announcements ("nooo traaain"). Stepped on the train, nothing happened, and back off again. As I was standing at the top of the subway entrance wondering what to do, I was approached by two people asking about the status of the noisy metal beast. Not going anywhere, but do you know the best alternative? It turned out they worked two buildings down from me, so we followed each other on a convoluted path toward our common street. On the way there I saw a guy I remembered from Raleigh, but I couldn't remember his name, so I let him pass without saying hello.
Today, (after running into one of my train buddies from yesterday), I met up with a friend I'd met in 1997 in London, whom I've only stayed in touch with via email, and barely. We met in Madison Square Park, after eyeing all of the strangers suspiciously: is that Stuart? Is that Lisa? We hung out in a place that had some connection to O. Henry, walked across lower Manhattan till we reached water, passed an old man slumped in a corner that Stuart had helped a few days before: giving him a dollar, buying him a drink, pulling up the man's pants for him (on request), and we talked about all of the listed taboo subjects (politics, religion, I don't know, sports? The sports part of the conversation was brief).
I don't get tired of walking; it's actually often better than arriving. I don't wish I were somewhere else. I'm strangely content. I keep running into people whom I've seen before. My shoulders hurt from carrying around so much crap; I often wish I had my camera, but then I'd need a third shoulder.
Generous hips, the bulging of the back clasp of a bra, a gelled comb-over, painted toenails on feet with elevated heels, dirty fingernails on hands wrapped around a silver pole, the sprouting brown roots underneath a sprawl of bright orange hair. Unless you close your eyes, you're almost obligated to stare at some part of someone—looking away would only bring another person into your field of vision. So you concentrate on a 1x1 foot square of whatever it is in front of you, studying it, until the train stops and doors open and the contents shuffle around a bit. You make brief eye contact with some of the people who aren't asking for money, and you sit wedged between strangers whose warmth you feel on your left and right. Much of what you observe drifts in and out of your consciousness without judgment, until the extraordinary jerks you awake.
Going to the grocery store is altogether different. Not different like in Berlin, where I could still take a car but had to pay a deposit for my shopping cart and purchase the grocery bags. Yesterday was my first major trip C-Town, a cheap Brooklyn supermarket that sells almost everything except for produce. I rode my bike there, picked up some bungie cords so that I could fasten a milk crate just above the back tire, and piled the groceries inside the crate and in my backpack.
The problem came when I went to the produce market. In order to go inside the store, I had to leave my bike unguarded and unlocked, sprouting $50 worth of groceries ready for the taking. So I hurriedly threw bruised top-layer fruits and vegetables into clear plastic baggies, looking behind me like a paranoid shoplifter, watching to see if my groceries and bike were going to find a new home.
It was difficult to navigate the bike with the extra weight on the back—dodging construction, walkers, and cars—and harder still to drag the bike up the stairs. Miraculously, I didn't litter the street with cereal and yogurt containers, and the loaf of bread I bought wasn't at all flattened. I am, however, working out a new system.
By the way, the first day on the new job was a good one.
It still feels like I'm traveling, that in a couple of days or weeks or months it will be time to jump on a plane or load up another truck and head south. I guess it will take starting work (which happens tomorrow) for the vacation feeling to pass.
Since arriving on Saturday (it took two days to get here, rather than the anticipated one), I've been learning my new neighborhood through running errands—picking up food, finding the local hardware store, buying wood and paint and metal, exploring the night life within a ten-minute walking radius. Already, bike riding has been transformed from a leisurely activity into my most efficient mode of transportation (along with the subway, of course), and my legs and feet are being educated for their new, more active role in my life. They are teaching me that they're slow learners.
I haven't heard any birds or squirrel screeches or tree frogs or crickets. Instead, it's drills and saws and horns and the heaving of large vehicles as they accelerate and the music box tinkling of the ice cream truck(s), which seem(s) to drive past my window every half-hour or so. Oh, and the howls of my cat. I'm not sure what to do about those. I'm tempted to give her a treat whenever it happens, just to make her stop, but it might have the opposite effect in the long run. So far I'm enduring, petting, talking.
The first two days of the move were the worst in terms of not knowing what to do with myself. There were too many projects and not enough time or hands, and I couldn't find anything. It felt almost as if I'd just started a new job waiting tables, and I didn't know where anything in the restaurant was located. I hadn't memorized the list of salad dressings, all of the patrons looked strange and unapproachable, and I had been dropped off in the midst of the lunch rush.
Fortunately, Martin generously helped: drive the truck up from NC, build the stairs to the loft that my housemate Bil had constructed, build a closet, patch up the walls, empty boxes, explore, keep me from getting overwhelmed. Now that he's gone, in addition to there being a Martin void, I'm faced with spackling, sanding, painting, and building, using my own (decidedly more awkward) methods. There is still so much to do, but I'm no longer in that lunch rush. That promptly ended with the creation of a closet and the organization of my CDs.
Some pictures from my going-away party. Writing, I think, will resume tomorrow.
I'm sitting on the arm of my couch, leaning over awkwardly toward my computer, typing on flat laptop keys, my bare feet resting on sawdust. Me, my cat, my things, we're all in Brooklyn now. Of course I have more to say about that, but I should locate my keyboard and my chair first.
Already, the days of the week mean nothing, except in terms of how close they are to Friday, the day that I'm supposed to move. I finally began boxing and taping and carrying heavy objects down rickety stairs today, scraping knees and pinching fingers, making corners of my house suddenly seem naked and ashamed. I have discovered little colonies of pen caps, dust, and pennies, sometimes with a catnip mouse presiding over them. I have ruthlessly broken them up.
Am I excited? is the question people keep asking. Not really, not yet. I'm too focused on the things I have left to do, the unraveling of my current life, the things I predict that I'll miss. But I am: edgy, overwhelmed, pensive, appreciative, stressed out, productive.
The party last night was great. I'm uncomfortable having parties in my honor because I'm afraid that no one will come. But people came and they made me a silly card and they stayed out late, even though it was Monday and many of them had to get up early in the morning.
Tonight, it was dinner with my family, watching my nephew and niece drag out my old toys and hand them to me like new discoveries, looking at slides from my parents' trip overseas, exchanging full boxes for empty ones.
Tomorrow, I don't remember.
***
I apologize if I owe you an e-mail. It will probably definitely be a few more days before I can get back to you.
It sits within my chest and is connected to my brain and sleeps most of the time. When it is awakened, I can usually convince it to be quiet, to wait until I am in more appropriate company, or better yet, when I am alone. Then I can let it escape without regret, let it travel through my vocal chords, my hands, my eyes and dissipate into the air. I'm almost always better off without it.
On Saturday, I went to the eye doctor to pick up some contacts and obtain my records, errand #135. It's tempting to take care of all of the errands I could possibly anticipate for the rest of my life, since my car and I are heading for imminent divorce.
The eye doctor is in a town called Cary, a mess of strip malls and parking lots crammed with SUVs and minivans, neighborhoods with identical pastel-painted houses, families with young kids named Hunter and Taylor. There aren't many reasons to go to Cary, apart from the eye doctor.
So. Thirty minutes to get there, a sign on the door that contradicts the regular business hours: closed, just because. I went to another branch in that same town, but it was unable to help me, just because. Today I drove back to the original office, arriving at 1 p.m., which, as you know, is the middle of the day. When I got to the door, a woman poked her head out and said, "We're closing for the next hour. [just because] We're having a meeting," and promptly shut the door in my face.
That experience (in combination with the speed bumps and the exitless parking lot and the Wal-Mart and the heat and the stress of moving) set off the alarm clock and woke my little friend. It was going to speak for me—I know it would have—but by the time 2:00 came, after I'd found some distraction in an air-conditioned place, it had already fallen back asleep. And without its input, I'd been transformed from a frog to a prince, back into a pleasant customer who doesn't complain.
***
Tonight is the going-away party.
This is the last time I'll see _____. This is the last time I'll drive to _____. This is the last meal I'll have with _____.
It's already started. Today was my last day at work.
