DISCLAIMER: I'm struggling with whether this ms should be in past or present. As I haven't decided, there will be many tense shifts. Just go with it. If you can't, I apologize in advance for your headache. I've also changed the real names, but may not have caught all of them...
It was exactly a week from Disneyland that I arrived at the Creative Alliance building in Highlandtown, a suburb of Baltimore City, about ten minutes from downtown and the Inner Harbor. I drove down Eastern Avenue not from the city with its ESPN Zone, Hard Rock Café, boutiques, paddle boats, and National Aquarium, but from the other way, through the abandoned breweries and warehouses on the industrial side so the area looked depressed and grim. Five minutes of absolutely nothing green, some boarded up storefronts, various nationalities loitering on corners, and I started to wonder if I'd made a very stupid mistake. The whole effect was very shocking after living in a nearly rural area with hills and horses.
The CA building itself was a two-story brick structure that used to be The Patterson movie theatre. I remember my father telling me how he used to take the bus there as a teenager most weekends. The marquee was still up and working; it's blue and yellow rows of lights rippled on and off. On all sides were tall, wide windows. While Keegan took a long pee at a nearby tree, I looked up to the second floor, knowing that was where the studios were, wondering which one was mine. Inside all was cement, white walls, and black beams of indeterminate metal, mismatched chairs and threadbare plants, a few café tables and chairs. Behind glass doors to my left were a few offices. Straight ahead was a gallery with mazelike sage-green half-walls specially constructed for what was titled, 'The Big Show,' artwork produced by members. Further, the double doors led into the theatre. A large staircase rose to my right. A few people sat on a couch by the theatre, some wandered around the exhibit. A young black man with a tremendous Afro greeted me with a friendly smile. I asked for JD, who was the Artistic Director, and the person to whom I sent my application and had been making arrangements for moving in by email and phone for the last two months. The man who came out didn't match the voice; I was expecting someone tall and too skinny, with messy hair and a musician's air about him (don't know why about the musician stuff). JD was shorter, not as much hair, glasses, pale as I was, a little thick around the middle. His eyes were large and pretty. I instantly felt that he was calm, but also mischievous, which I liked. I got the feeling he knew a lot of good jokes. Keegan liked him immediately and vice versa.
"Welcome to the Patterson!" he greeted me cheerfully. "Let me show you around."
I got a quick tour downstairs, sat down for a few moments to officially sign a copy of my lease, then he took me up to show me my space. The door was open and as we walked in there was the smell of fresh paint, a smell I've always found a little nauseating, but this time didn't really bother me. Next to a church, I'd never been in a space so open. There was so much light and air it was overwhelming; I took a long, deep breath and turned in circles looking at everything, trying to feel it was mine. The room was a large, upside down U-shape with the same cement floor as downstairs, and the same black beams hanging high in the air like a spider web. The ceiling was easily thirty-five feet high. Six fluorescent lights resembled trapezes, and there was a complex network of exposed ducts and pipes. The loft ran halfway across the apartment, with an attached, steep wooden ladder bolted to the floor. Some of the beams dissected the space of the loft, but there was still a large area where one could put a bedroom, or an office. Keegan pulled to explore so I let the leash go. He ran straight to the window and sat, happily watching activity on the street below.
"Looks like he's home," JD observed.
"Guess so."
I realize there's a large hoop hanging from one of the beams. JD follows my gaze. "That's Caroline's, from next door. She was using this as a practice space. I thought it would be gone by now. I'll have someone take it down."
"Caroline is a trapeze artist?" I knew there were seven other artists living here, but had no idea what their talents were.
"She's an aerialist/performance artist. Her family has a background in the circus."
God I'm boring.
"If you don't bump into anyone in the hall, you'll have a chance to meet the group at the next Residents' Happy Hour. We meet on the first Friday every month to check in with each other about projects and just to hang out."
"I'm glad to hear it. Since grad school, I've been missing meeting regularly with writers or artists."
"Somebody hosts it every month. Carl is hosting it next Friday. He's a painter. He also writes poetry—got his bachelor’s in it at Maryland years ago—so you two have that in common."
So now I knew two of the residents' names and talents; a small step towards belonging there.
"How many slots were open this time?" I asked.
"Three. The other two are painters, Amanda and Ethan. Normally we'd only have one space open, but two people decided to leave after only a year."
I nodded, very grateful for that!
His cell phone rang. He checked it and smiled. "I'll let you settle in. Let me know if you need anything."
"Thanks, JD."
When the door closed I pulled a water bowl out of my bag and filled it up from the tap for Keegan. I dropped my bag by the window so he knew I'd be back, then headed out to the car to start the unloading process. The back end of my car has visibly sagged for the last eight days; I'm surprised by how much I packed into it, let alone that I made it cross country. It took me fully an hour to carry the boxes, curtains, rugs, two suitcases of clothes, pictures, computer, tape deck, bedding, Keegan's toys, air mattress, important books, shoes, lamps, plants, and kitchen stuff upstairs. Each time I staggered down the hall I noticed the notes some residents written on each other's dry erase boards in blue, black, or red marker. On Caroline's: I quit my job! Only have five month's worth of money to work on the film -- Ed; Beth, let's go over the latest drawings of the plane -- Caroline. Each time I get to my door, my board is conspicuously blank. I knew it was very 'high school' of me, but I wanted notes too.
Once everything is inside, I lay out the rugs, plugged in the lamps, put on a CD, made some tea with my kettle and a mug, put out some food for Keegan, tacked up some curtains over the huge window, and it started to feel more familiar. In a couple of days I'd pick up a rental truck and get the rest of my things, which had been in storage during my time in California. It had never felt right to have them shipped and, frankly, I hadn't had the money.
Digging out some sheets, I made up the air mattress and sat on it with my tea. Keegan began running around with a new toy, skidding on the slippery cement, clearly having decided it was okay here. I'd spent the last week in various motels; it was good to stop moving. And I always got a thrill out of claiming a new apartment.
Suddenly, as happens in summer in Baltimore, there was a thunderstorm with rushing rain. Though the roof didn't leak, by the echoing popping and drumming, it sounded as if the water was running in the pipes and ducts above. It was a strangely peaceful sound. Fishing my journal out of my purse, I wrote:
This room will always echo,
no matter how many pictures, books,
and chairs. Concrete floor is water
masked as gravity. Walls are white
as milk. Black steel beams intersect
like Chinese characters, a giant cat's
cradle, rigging. What should be still
is moving. When it rains, I hear
the language I'll learn. I'm finally at sea.
This room is full of falling.
#
Day two: I woke up and it was there: that mid-summer floating feeling. The whir of the air conditioner reminded me of days locked up in my bedroom as a teenager, lying on my bed reading romances and Agatha Christie books all day, feeling the heat pressing against the windows to get in. That feeling that there's all the time in the world.
I pulled on some shorts, put my hair in a ponytail, and took Keegan to Patterson Park. We didn't have time for a proper walk yesterday so I wanted to make up for it. In just two blocks, we were there and we both bounded happily across the street and into the grass. Immediately I'm drunk on the trees. I'd missed them, the ones in LA were pitiful compared to these. There's nothing like Maryland trees to me--huge, old, thick trunks, sprawling limbs full of tangles of leaves. They rose in rows--silent gods, hugging the curve of the hill around the baseball and soccer fields. Beyond them, the rest of the park stretched as far as the eye could see, with the Baltimore skyline in the background. Keegan and I ran halfway down the hill and collapsed in the grass. After a year and a half of brown and yellow hills, with a few months of stiff green brush, I was overwhelmed and intoxicated. Looking up through the leaves, I realized I was free of a presence I'd lived with for a long time--fear. For the last eight years I'd experienced--off and on--with Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Usually, anytime there was a big, important change in my life--good or bad--anxiety took over. But after having driven alone cross country twice in less than two years, finding jobs and teaching classes and finishing another book, I felt capable of handling whatever did or didn't happen in my life. I felt at home with myself. I trusted myself. You might think this would be a given, that we each feel that way automatically, but it isn't. It had taken me nearly forty years, but I got there and it felt good.
#
After a trip to WalMart for garment racks and bags of plastic hangers (no closet, I discovered, just the deep recess where one can put things like garment racks, but which I'd been using as a bedroom. I couldn't use the loft for that purpose, as there was no railing and there was no way I could carry Keegan up and down that ladder anyway), I set to work unpacking the suitcases. About an hour later someone knocked on my door, startling me. I'd felt so self-contained, as if I was the only one in a dorm full of students who stayed home over summer break. I wanted to hold onto that. But I also wanted to meet some of the residents. I wiped my sweaty palms on my shorts and opened the door.
Standing outside was a very skinny man with whitish-gray hair brushed back off his forehead, and a long, narrow face. His eyes were small and dark, the proverbial 'beady,' which I found a little off-putting. I guessed he was in his late fifties. This was a relief to me, as I had worried a little that I might be the oldest resident--thirty-nine. I had imagined the others to be in their twenties, just out of grad school. He's in gray shorts, a T-shirt with a faded picture I can't make out, and a short sleeved gray and white plaid shirt.
"Carl Jones." He held out his hand and I automatically shook it. It was as bony as the rest of him. "Welcome. I realize you're busy with unpacking, but if you'd like to take a break, I'd like to invite you to tea at four this afternoon."
The interaction begins! I was raring to go after being on my own, creatively, for the last few years. Julie wrote--poetry, essays, plays, but with the kids always running around, there wasn't a lot of time for her to do her own writing, let alone read mine. Occasionally I exchanged poems with a friend from grad school, Rachel, but it wasn't the same as a regular workshop. It was kind of Carl to invite me to tea, but I'm also a naturally cautious person, especially when it comes to men (as you've seen, I have a talent for attracting the wrong kind, and that includes men I'm not interested in), so I almost wished he'd just said hello and left it at that; it seemed too much too quickly. But this was the new me, so I decided to accept and get the artistic dialogue going. In the past I've rushed to decide who someone is before I really know them, though I find I'm often right on on some things. But I'd like to just stay open and not do that anymore. See whatever and whoever comes my way without me trying to influence the universe with a list of demands. Detachment.
"Thanks, I'd like that. Can I bring anything?"
"No. It'll be simple, all taken care of."
Keegan, just now realizing someone was at the door, surges over and pushes out into the hall to circle Carl's feet, sniffing.
"Hey there!" Carl said, surprised, and bent down to scratch Keegan's ears. I could tell K liked him, which was a good sign. "Bring him along. I'm at the end of the hall, around the corner."
"Okay, we'll see you at four."
Copyright 2006, Christine Stewart. All Rights Reserved