Nine in a decade
Hello!
I return to you victorious from two months of ruthless house hunting! After battling our way through an endless stream of open houses and sending our full financial history to every landlord on this side of the East River, we made it out with keys to an abode in hand.
When the hunt concluded at the end of June, Nick and I boxed our stuff and moved into our new home with the help of three strong men who were soft at heart.
As we carried boxes up the stairs, I learned that the oldest one of the three would fly his mom to Paris for the first time the following week to celebrate her 80th birthday. She was excited, he said, to see the gardens. He told me he had lived in Paris as a student and mostly enjoyed the strip clubs.
“The best!” he said.
“I’m sure,” I answered, which was a strange thing to say back.
All I know about strip clubs is that they prefer cash. Even that might not be true. If I ever become a stripper, I’ll take Zelle.
I asked if he planned to bring his mom to a club during the trip. “She’s too old,” he told me, as if that were the only reason to abstain.
In the living room, the second mover held up a framed lithograph he’d carried out of the truck and demanded an explanation:
“What is this?” he asked.
“It’s from Japan,” I said, which didn’t answer his question.
I didn’t mean to sound standoffish but it’s truly all I know about the lithograph. I found it by flipping through one of my dad’s folders when I was in college and I liked the shades of blue and the serene expression of the woman in it, so he told me I could have it. Once my dad saw it framed and hanging in my room a year or so later, he said: “I had this the whole time?” Tough luck sitting on a sleeper. The mover asked me if I was Japanese, which was sweet but also the first time anyone has ever asked me that.
The youngest man of the three smoked a lot. I know this because every time I ran downstairs he was pulling on a cigarette. Maybe it was a coincidence.
He had helped carry boxes out of our old place into the truck earlier in the day but then he sat at the wheel, double parked in front of the new building the rest of the afternoon. When his colleagues eventually finished unloading, he joined us upstairs and asked if he could use the bathroom. The bathroom still felt foreign to me, I hadn’t even peed in it myself and it took me a few seconds to understand why he had asked.
Then I said, “of course.”
Nick, the movers and I waited in front of the bathroom and tried to drown out the sounds coming from it with small talk. Once the youngest man stepped out of the bathroom, he took the time to look around the apartment. I wondered if he, too, was internalizing the forty-or-so boxes piled up into cardboard buildings across the space.
“Congratulations,” he said, but I think he meant godspeed.
August
Yesterday I made a list of the places I’ve called home in the last decade:
It is an accidental ritual of mine, to change homes almost every year like I am trying on different costumes. Some have been off by a size or two, or worn in the wrong company. Several have been misfits. One day I will tell you about the thirty pounds of raw fish that thawed in my freezer and dripped their juices in the engine of my fridge for weeks because the power was cut off while I was out of town. Or why a landlord ripped out every floorboard of the apartment I still lived in.
Every time I walk into our new place I think it hugs me. It tastes delicious, like a warm bowl of oatmeal on a snowy morning with all the time in the world ahead. Even in progress, it already feels like home.
Things that brought me joy
This morning, I finished Jazz by Toni Morrison on the subway to work. I recommend reading it from a New York train station in August, surrounded by hot stale air, as close to your neighbor’s sweaty armpit as you can comfortably stand. I’m still unsettled by the mysterious first person narrator who isn’t an active character in the story. Some unreliable goddess with a sweet tooth for pain.
Zoe Si’s portraits as an act of love
This list is a gift that keeps on giving
Sketching the arches of St Patrick’s cathedral:
Till next time,
Clara
P.S.: This newsletter is now called Agua Carbonara (formerly Raw Material), which is the term I very seriously used to order sparkling water in Spanish over the winter. My reputation precedes me.