By the time I moved out of New York, I’d lived on my own or with friends in twelve different apartments and one house. I lived in my first apartment only for two weeks; the Italian landlady got one look at my black friends and politely but firmly told me she’d changed her mind about the lease. After New York, another seven different living arrangements. I’m an expert at packing; I know how disruptive and annoying the process of moving is. Yet I still get a thrill looking at pictures of apartments for rent or houses for sale online. I can still trick myself into falling asleep by imagining furnishing an empty apartment, usually one I know well. For this post, I have been trying to remember a recurrent dream about houses that have extra rooms in them, rooms I’d forgot were there. Occasionally in these dreams I am touring other people through them- a metaphor for writing? The extra rooms generally are lush, neat, and all in a row on either side of a spacious corridor. The main feature is the extra space: there are places as yet unexplored. I always wake up from these dreams feeling happy and hopeful. The funny thing to me now is that in trying to recall them, I got fixated on which house or apartment it was that had inspired the dreams in the first place. I’m not even sure there was one place in particular. Nostalgia literally means the pain of the journey home. For me, it’s the excitement of discovering the place I dwell in is larger than I thought. The photo was taken in the backyard of a house I rented with two other roommates in Providence. The egg-like object is a stone.
This “interlude” project draws to a close with the letter “w,” and I have to say, I’m sad. Finding the words for these fourteen posts has been a walk back into memory, a wrestling with concision and juxtaposition. Also the necessity of courage, saying some things I didn’t think I could say in print. Turns out it wasn’t so bad after all, like drawing a long deep breath and then letting it go.
Now I have to decide whether to return to the blog format I began with or try something new once again. Talk about extra rooms beyond the original floor plan.
This “interlude” project draws to a close with the letter “w,” and I have to say, I’m sad. Finding the words for these fourteen posts has been a walk back into memory, a wrestling with concision and juxtaposition. Also the necessity of courage, saying some things I didn’t think I could say in print. Turns out it wasn’t so bad after all, like drawing a long deep breath and then letting it go.
Now I have to decide whether to return to the blog format I began with or try something new once again. Talk about extra rooms beyond the original floor plan.
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