Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Movin' Out
What's there to say? I'm movin' out. I'm moving out of the small, charming apartment that marked the beginning of my "adulthood" - of living alone, and independent from parents, boyfriends, and pets. It was just me. Me and the skylight, me and the cat urine that would sometimes seep into my apartment from the reclusive, crazy downstairs that keeps twenty-five cats as prisoners in her small studio. I don't really know how many poor cats are shacked up in there, but it smells like the detritus of two thousand five hundred unhappy felines. But the apartment afforded me a look into myself, what I want to do, what am I doing, and what am I going to do? The apartment also bore witness to my ruts, my fits of joy, of sadness, of anger, of disillusionment, and of excitement. If the walls had ears, they would say, "Gee Clover, you've lived a hundred lives in this apartment." And now I am leaving. Where am I going, my friends want to know. I am temporarily moving into my parent's home before I relocate to Europe. My girlfriend just asked me if I'm freaking out? No, I replied. I have a goal in mind. If I didn't have a goal, I would be indeed, freaking out. But there's the rest of my good life waiting for me; and I want it to start right away, right now in fact. I am looking forward to it. So there's the boxes, the packing, the temporary feeling of regression as I reintegrate myself into my old childhood room, but those feelings and reactions will be fast and sweeping, and perhaps a little reassuring before everything in my life changes rather drastically. I will miss the overwhelming, all-encompassing light in my apartment from the skylight that stupidly sits above my bed. Don't think I ever got a good night of sleep in this apartment, as a cause of the light from the sun and moon. Recently, there was some sort of pigeon massacre on the other side of the glass. And now there is a sad, grisly postmortem display of feathers, and disembodied pigeon legs hanging. This has framed my view of the sky these past few days. Terrible. You probably think at this point that I live in an animal house, I don't, I didn't. There were just some problems with the place, it was, shall we say, less than ideal. And now it's an end of an era for me. I don't quite feel it yet. But I haven't started to pack yet, and maybe once I do, and see the remnants of the life I lived in this here apartment, I will feel differently. But I don't think so. I'm "Movin' Out." Thanks for the song Billy Joel. I'll listen to it while I'll box up my old life.
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For the past 18 years we’ve inhabited the top two floors of a three story carriage house nestled behind the main building of an apartment house located on the only two way street in Greenwich Village. You can’t see our little house from the street. It’s charming and secluded—like a well-kept secret surprise. The main hall of the building spills out onto a small common courtyard that centers on a very tiny garden. This little plot of land used to get a lot more attention from me before I went back to graduate school.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I spend a lot of time studying these days, availing myself of the natural light under my own upstairs skylight, and perhaps, that’s why I’ve had the opportunity to take note of the changing landscape of our little corner of the West Village. Parts of it have drifted away right before my eyes—and yesterday, most notably, so did our lovely neighbor Clover.
We miss Clover already. It’s not that we knew her well—although we did have a shared acquaintance—or socialized with her on any kind of a regular basis, but for the last few years, she has been a significant presence across our little courtyard. My husband and I always liked Clover. To us she seemed a talented young woman, smart, pretty and personable. And, she was the perfect neighbor.
On the rare occasions you could hear anything emanating from Clover’s apartment, it usually came in the form of some wonderful music I had completely forgotten about. She reminded me to revisit the likes of Leonard Bernstein and Ella Fitzgerald. Her musical tastes were wise well beyond her years – she loved the theatre and it showed. When we did pass her in the foyer on the street, she always seemed to sparkle; her smile was warm, and her “hello!” genuine. She was a reassuring presence across the way, both friendly and familiar, and perhaps most importantly, she never broke the boundaries of our collective fourth wall.
Last night, on my way downstairs from my bedroom to my living room, I automatically scanned the terrain outside my window as I passed by—something I have done hundreds of times without thinking. This time as I looked across the courtyard to Clover’s apartment, and it hit me. Her window shade was gone; the edge of the poster I had come to expect to catch a glimpse of had disappeared. The familiar array of pots and pans were no longer visible atop her kitchen cabinets—the lone flower in the vase in the kitchen window was nowhere to be seen. The lights were out and no was home. She was gone.
We quickly shot her an email and she confirmed our suspicions. She was moving onward and upward to begin a new chapter in her life. Immediately we had mixed feelings—sorry to see her go and yet happy she was moving forward and getting on with her life. Clover is an extraordinary woman with a limitless future ahead of her and I’m sure she’s going to thrive wherever she goes. Still, there was a real moment of melancholy that engulfed us last night.
While I’m sure that some nice new neighbor will move in and life in the courtyard will go as usual, things will be different without Clover. She will be missed more than she knows.
That's just the kind of fitting tribute you'd expect about very few. Clover's that kind of extraordinary being. She'll now enchant, enrage, and capture others - elsewhere.
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