Vol. 43: Cut Once, Measure Twice
Mastering the art of being a homebody. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself.
It’s pouring out when I wake up—and my room is still cloaked in a grayish dark that could mark it as anywhere from 4am to 8am on such a gloomy day. It’s a welcome relief from the heat of the past couple of weeks in New England and I slept with the window open in anticipation. I can see the curtains swaying just ever so slightly in the breeze.
I’m not particularly tired after accidentally sleeping for 11 hours—after a night of sleeping maybe three—but this is the kind of weather that makes me want to roll right back over and bury my face into the duvet. Or even better, slip out just long enough to bring coffee back with me and rebury myself with a mug and a book like a raven stashing away trinkets.
I’ve been going through a period of what could best be described as belated spring cleaning. I’ve donated bags and bags to the city’s clothing recycling program. I conned my brother into helping me build a new kitchen counter (so my new KitchenAid Mixer—a birthday present from Emma, Erin, Zoe, and Neill I’m still in awe of—would have a place of honor. I framed and hung up vintage postcards of Salem, because who wouldn’t want to gaze at “the place where the witches were hanged” while they pour a bowl of cereal. All to try to fix the gnawing feeling that the space where I’ve been living for three and half years didn’t quite feel like a home.
This is my second time living alone. The first was the studio apartment in Ravenswood that I moved into the summer of 2020. (Nothing like chosen isolation on top of forced isolation to make you examine every corner of your life.)
If anyone asks me what my favorite part of that apartment was, the obvious answer would be the closet: a 10 foot-long monstrosity that connected to the vintage bathroom and ran the length of the living space. My mom referred to it my Carrie Bradshaw closet and will still, from time to time, mournfully sigh “and ohhh that closet.”
But truthfully, my answer would be the hallway. It was so delightful to me that a studio apartment would have a hallway in the first place. When I rented the space, I was living temporarily in rural western North Carolina. I don’t remember doing a virtual tour, and even more recklessly, I didn’t have any photos of the space itself (only of the third floor apartment with the same layout and dark wood trim that I’m glad I avoided). But I tend to pick apartments the way some people describe meeting their spouses: the gut-level of feeling of oh, it’s you.
The hallway connected the living space in the front of the building to the kitchen in the back with the front door placed in the middle, a factor of a central stairwell. When I first saw it, I had this vision of a single shelf built over the doorway on either end, a design choice I kept describing to my dad as “like a house in Amsterdam,” to no shortage of confusion. To his credit, after a Home Depot run or two, and a fair amount of cursing, he did give me my bookshelves. And some days I would find myself simply standing in the middle, marveling at this simple architectural feature. I had never had a hallway before. Some days I wonder if I will ever have a hallway again.
I loved that apartment: the neighbor who would practice cello in the evenings, the old iron bathtub deep enough to submerge in, the hall closet I managed to fit a desk and chair into and call “my office,” the central location to important things like Lost Larson morning buns, the rabbits that live in Winnemac Park, and Grace’s apartment—and also her printer when I needed a physical copy of a important document.
This apartment is different. For one thing, it has doors. It has a proper bedroom. It has the smallest closet I’ve ever had the misfortune of trying to shove my clothes into. But it also has beautiful, tall windows—paired with the ugly vinyl roll shades I associate with my grandmother’s interior design.
It’s less to marvel at, but I want to marvel all the same. It’s a blessing to live a life where I can afford my own space in one of the pricier rental markets in the country. It’s a blessing to be able to decide on a whim that maybe some terracotta colored linen curtains would give the living room the something I feel that it’s missing (TBD on that). And when I make these changes, impulsive or not, they’re all in search of that elusive, slippery feeling of settling in.
Sometimes I will have people over and transform into a kid wanting to show off their rock collection. I’m eager to show off any changes to the space or point out something in particular I think they may enjoy. Do you like this drawing of Lombard Street that my mom pulled out of the trash for me? Do you think this lamp would be better on a side table so I could read better over here and set down a glass of wine?
Can you see it? Can you see me? I feel like I’m saying. Can you picture this reality? As if that’s the first step in casting the spell that makes it real.
Parting Shots
In a couple of weeks, I’m heading to central Vermont for my first ever writers’ retreat. As someone who has made writing my full-time gig, I’m a bit daunted by what to bring to the table in a creative sense. Other than these newsletters, I’m not regularly writing “for fun,” nor do I have back-burner projects in any serious way. I’m excited for the opportunity to push myself. To dig deep (or to just dig differently), and see what comes to the surface. More on that soon. For now, I have to drag myself out of bed I suppose.
