The In-Between
In this city I often think about the hundreds of thousands of people tucked away in their jobs—in cubicles or construction sites or underground. I think to myself, "Who was assigned the job of stuffing the men's waist-down underwear mannequins in the window around the corner?" or "What poor soul is going to clean up the mess that led my entire subway car to file to the front end this morning?" or "How did that woman become a sea-lion trainer in the middle of Prospect Park?" All these thoughts have crossed my mind this week in the middle of my own work. Some points in time feel definitively liminal and this has been one for me.
The school where I work is between semesters. There are no students in the building and no art being made. Instead we are expanding our print shop across the hall to fill up the entire floor. Walls are coming down left and right. The men punch a row of hammer-holes in the sheet rock and then reach in and pull body-sized pieces down to reveal pink insulation and hollow metal framework. The walls come down in less than ten minutes each, and then they spend a day or so building a new wall in a new place.
I still need a paycheck so I'm here finding once-a-decade-jobs with my coworkers. Last week, my coworker and I pushed a cart with two hundred, seventy-six pounds of copper, aluminum, and zinc to a recycling center between tenth and eleventh. The entry to the center was sqeezed in between a white-walled gallery and a walled-up recording studio. Just inside the garage door a view opened up to a massive lot with piles of metal, stories high, and men driving bulldozers to build the piles higher. I don't think a woman had entered the facilities in a couple of years, so all the workers wandered over to help us. And everyone asked why on earth we wanted to recycle the beautiful drawings on the plates—self portraits with eyes set mid-forehead and landscapes with butterflies. We made one hundred, twenty-six dollars on our trashed metals and got cupcakes on the way back to work.
In the middle of this literal tear-down I continually lapse into thoughts about my upcoming move to the midwest. The thought of my new city is very abstract and I am nervous. It has been my experience that I do not enjoy living with the anticipation of change, but it is mostly the anticipation which shakes me up. Once transplated I am calm and adaptable and enjoy the newness of everything. I've moved a lot in my life with and without my family, so the anxiety is familiar, but the knowledge of the energy of a new phase still isn't quite enough to teach me to be optimistic. I'm still enjoying living in my current life and moving in the same circles I've known for several years. But things are changing here too.
My friend J is going to become a mother in a few weeks. I've watched her belly grow for over nine months yet it is still a very foreign idea that she will have a daughter or son in a matter of days—she'll be a parent. At the same time, one of my oldest friends has just separated from her husband. I met her outside her new apartment on Monday. She was locked out and looked small sitting in the hallway waiting for a locksmith. I sat down next to her new mattress pad and shower curtain and we talked for a while about the usual things even though everything about the situation was unusual, her new door just to our left.
With things changing in every room, it's comforting to realize that even if I am going far from what I know the people close to me are taking leaps as well—that makes it seem not so far at all. For now though I have odd jobs to keep busy and people that I care about to find good conversation with—more than enough.
The school where I work is between semesters. There are no students in the building and no art being made. Instead we are expanding our print shop across the hall to fill up the entire floor. Walls are coming down left and right. The men punch a row of hammer-holes in the sheet rock and then reach in and pull body-sized pieces down to reveal pink insulation and hollow metal framework. The walls come down in less than ten minutes each, and then they spend a day or so building a new wall in a new place.
I still need a paycheck so I'm here finding once-a-decade-jobs with my coworkers. Last week, my coworker and I pushed a cart with two hundred, seventy-six pounds of copper, aluminum, and zinc to a recycling center between tenth and eleventh. The entry to the center was sqeezed in between a white-walled gallery and a walled-up recording studio. Just inside the garage door a view opened up to a massive lot with piles of metal, stories high, and men driving bulldozers to build the piles higher. I don't think a woman had entered the facilities in a couple of years, so all the workers wandered over to help us. And everyone asked why on earth we wanted to recycle the beautiful drawings on the plates—self portraits with eyes set mid-forehead and landscapes with butterflies. We made one hundred, twenty-six dollars on our trashed metals and got cupcakes on the way back to work.
In the middle of this literal tear-down I continually lapse into thoughts about my upcoming move to the midwest. The thought of my new city is very abstract and I am nervous. It has been my experience that I do not enjoy living with the anticipation of change, but it is mostly the anticipation which shakes me up. Once transplated I am calm and adaptable and enjoy the newness of everything. I've moved a lot in my life with and without my family, so the anxiety is familiar, but the knowledge of the energy of a new phase still isn't quite enough to teach me to be optimistic. I'm still enjoying living in my current life and moving in the same circles I've known for several years. But things are changing here too.
My friend J is going to become a mother in a few weeks. I've watched her belly grow for over nine months yet it is still a very foreign idea that she will have a daughter or son in a matter of days—she'll be a parent. At the same time, one of my oldest friends has just separated from her husband. I met her outside her new apartment on Monday. She was locked out and looked small sitting in the hallway waiting for a locksmith. I sat down next to her new mattress pad and shower curtain and we talked for a while about the usual things even though everything about the situation was unusual, her new door just to our left.
With things changing in every room, it's comforting to realize that even if I am going far from what I know the people close to me are taking leaps as well—that makes it seem not so far at all. For now though I have odd jobs to keep busy and people that I care about to find good conversation with—more than enough.
posted by Rebecca at 1:44 PM
3 Comments:
You really are a great writer, Miss. Love to read your stuff. But. cant you find a better picture of that woman in the green dress. Love you
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i think about you often, you and your impending (impended? -- is that word?) move.
surely, moving is hard. but fun? i visited new york in june. all year i have been so nervous that it was moving on without me. i arrived and nothing had changed.
well, not nothing. my friends: they were developing their friendships with each other -- in the same what that i was developing and changing my relationship with them.
new york is always changing, which is what makes it new york (or, more generally, what makes it present). it is comforting to know that to belong to a place is to change (with and without it) and that part of having relationships is changing with them.
remember when i was 12 and asked you out during 12 x 50 on a minute? (oh, tom himes!) we are still friends.
new york (and life) just works that way.
i think.
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