It's 2:10 a.m. as I write this, with bags and boxes and suitcases and paintings and the other miscellanea of my life piled around me. Tonight is the last night I'll spend in this apartment, 402-404 7th Avenue in Park Slope, where I've lived since I was 22 and almost totally new to New York. My studio is on the top floor, and I can hear the rain roll over the roof as I type, as it's pounded above me many nights and lulled me to sleep, like the sound is another blanket. I've been wonderfully taken care of by this apartment: It's a beautiful space, in a good neighborhood, with many friends, comforts, and conveniences nearby -- which is why I haven't left for eight years, when most of my friends have moved apartments every three or four years at most. But that's also partly why I feel ready to move: There is still a lot of twenty-two-year-old Cheryl here, when thirty-year-old Cheryl is a different person, older, presumably wiser, ready to have a different life, not to mention room decor.
(Thirty-year-old Cheryl is also terrified by the change, needless to say. But breathing deeply, and hoping.)
I don't have anything profound to say here, or a good narrative ending to round this off. It's too late to think, really, and I have to be up early in the morning to finish packing. But here's an invocation to last as long as this blog or the Internet does: I am grateful to God/the Universe/what-have-you for leading me to this place, and I hope the same will continue to bless the people who live here, and me elsewhere.
Friday, September 26, 2008
The End of an Era
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Best wishes, Cheryl!
ReplyDeleteI love the honesty, Cheryl; good writing is not always characterized by profound endings.
ReplyDeleteGood luck!
Love your blessing of the space.
ReplyDeleteWhat would thirty-year-old Cheryl say to twenty-two-year-old Cheryl, if you could use a HP time-turner hourglass and go back? You were probably a bit terrified then too.
Maybe your worst fears were never realized.
Maybe your fondest hopes weren't either.
Different things have happened, and it's all good in the long run. Or rather, it is what you make of it.
The next eight years will be like that too. So breathe deeply, and move forward!
Much luck and good wishes to you, Cheryl! The next place/phase/stage of your life will be just as good - if not better!
ReplyDeleteInto which neighborhood/borough are you moving? I lived on Fiske Pl. from 1997-2001. Aside from the car alarms it was a great place to live.
ReplyDeleteYou can do it, chica.
ReplyDeleteI strongly disagree with the moral choice of cohabitation outside of marriage, but I do wish you all the best in your future.
ReplyDeleteI wish you all the best in your move and in your new place.
ReplyDeleteDang it, Anonymous II! I was going for 100 percent moral approval from everyone, particularly unidentified strangers on the Internet. :-)
ReplyDeleteBut sincerely, and to all: Thank you for the good wishes.
Lotsa luck with your new place, Cheryl. And congratulations on entering a new phase of your life. It sounds like a good move to me.
ReplyDeleteStella
When we first moved to the upper West Side of NYC, I met people who had lived in the same apartments for many many years and thought nothing odd about it. Of course their rents stayed "controlled" (couldn't rise much) compared to moving and that controlled their moving tendencies!
ReplyDeleteBest wishes on the move and your new life.
Well, this anonymous poster is morally in favor of cohabitation outside of and/or before marriage. So, rah rah rah!
ReplyDeleteI hope your move went well, although it never does completely, does it?
Best wishes and a belated happy birthday!
Good wishes Cheryl for your new adventure! Change is hard! How exciting!
ReplyDelete.
And for what it's worth, my guy co-mingled our books after he moved in and almost twenty years later they are still co-mingled. ;-)
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Best thoughts,
,
Marilyn.
Hope you are settling well into your new home. Congratulations!
ReplyDelete