Today, as I knelt on my living-room floor, rolling concealing tape over the cord for a new lamp, I looked around and realized I am getting awfully close to finishing the job of moving in. Perhaps too close.
Sure, getting furniture and putting up shelving and arranging the lights takes some time when one moves to a new city. That excuse worked for the first month. But as I have moved from the gross anatomy of the apartment to the fine bones, I can tell something else is going on.
I place a mirror on the wall with a level, and then check the level, and then check it again. I bend over the kitchen counter, installing the magnetic strip for the knives in the kitchen. Adjust it a millimeter up, a millimeter down. I furrow my brow. It is very important that the knives be just the right height!
Eight million people out there in New York, eight million strangers, existing in a cacophony of sirens and hot blasts of air and stinking puddles. That is totally unmanageable.
But the height of my knife strip, that I can manage. A trip to the Rainbow hardware store – the third this week – for just the right length of wood screw, well, now you’re talking.
3 responses so far ↓
1 sam iam // Aug 10, 2008 at 2:08 pm
it is the finish work that takes forever…and once that’s done, imagine all the people you’ll never meet, who will never know you were alive.
This all means something, i’m just not sure what.
2 scott swanson // Aug 11, 2008 at 1:47 am
post request: next time hurricanes kick up waves in the atlantic I best be reading a post about you surfing rockaway beach my friend!
3 anne // Aug 12, 2008 at 2:20 pm
When we moved into our current house, I spent so much time in the local Home Depot that the manager joked that I was either stalking him or looking for a job.
I really missed our building super.
Leave a Comment