As the calendar sped toward my moving date in mid-August, I gathered together my favored tchotskes and smaller paintings (objects that were especially fragile or precious to me) and took them to my new home in The Fitzgerald. On each trip I loaded as much as possible into my car, drove to the parking garage in the Fitz and carried these things, often in several loads, to my apartment. The good news about the apartment’s location is that it’s in the front of the building, with nice views up and down Mount Royal Avenue and overlooking lots of green space that surrounds the old Mount Royal Station, now a building rented for a dollar a year to the Maryland Institute College of Art, better known in the neighborhood as MICA. The bad news about the apartment’s location is that it’s at the opposite end of the building from the parking garage, with 150 paces – yes, I counted them – in between. I’m not sure what part of a mile 150 paces is but it seems like a lot. Three trips a day from the house to the garage and often as many as three trips from the car to my apartment with 150 paces in each direction adds up to a lot of walking and carrying. During this phase in my move, I lost ten pounds, not a bad return on what could only be called dull and boring exercise.
On packing day, the truck arrived at my house early in the morning. The crew was seriously distressed to see that I wasn’t yet packed. They had come to move me, a slip-up in the role of dispatch at 1st Class Movers that didn’t inspire confidence in its service. But thanks to cell phones, we soon straightened it out. The guys had to re-maneuver their truck out of my parking lot, breaking a number of limbs on my cryptimeria in the process. About an hour later, the actual packing crew arrived, with a different but equally large truck and broke even more limbs, which I happily realized was no longer my problem. I’ve moved only a couple of times before but I’m always amazed at the ability of packers to so quickly and efficiently pull my surroundings apart and reduce my personality to the contents of dull, nondescript brown boxes. At the end of the day, the walls of the house, once laden with art, were bare and the surroundings I’ve loved seemed to sigh with their emptiness and loss. The next day, the movers came and the process of loading and then unloading droned on. I stayed in my apartment, directing traffic and telling the movers to put the sofa here, the wing chair there and the dining room table over there, in the corner by the windows. Then came the boxes, often carried one at a time, on the back of each member of the moving crew like a mule in a caravan, which had to travel its own path back and forth those 150 paces, with a crammed elevator thrown in. By the time the crew finished, late in the day, the men were exhausted and I was too tired to rummage for linens for the bed, simply sleeping on the mattress under an afghan, the only covering I could find.
The process of unpacking piles of boxes seemed endless, with mounds of packing paper and broken-down cartons rising up everywhere around me, like suds in a bubble bath, until this, too, could be dragged down the hall and into the elevator for its ultimate destination in the recycling dumpster in the garage. And yes, another 300 paces and two elevator rides for each load. There was so much refuse the building engineer had to schedule a special dumpster pick-up just to get rid of this offal from my move. As the contents of the boxes grew, I fought to find space in a small apartment for the contents of a medium-sized house. Every nook and cranny became important and although I had prepared for this transition – I’d had a yard sale, given many cartons of leftovers to Goodwill and sold or given away at least a third of my art; I’d even added shelves to the closets in the apartment and converted one closet to a pantry – there was still hardly enough space to hold my life. And no basement to contain those “other” things we always think we may need someday. But, finally, it was all put away. Even though my personality demanded a certain logic to this process, one of putting like things together, I still can’t find the corkscrew or the measuring tape or the Borden’s glue. Fighting an impulse to believe the moving crew guilty of leaving some of the cartons behind, I gave up the hunt, telling myself that these little essentials of my life would ultimately turn up. And they have.
After I found the pliers and the hammer and the picture wire, the greatest challenge to the arranging of my new home was deciding where the art would hang. I’d planned wall spaces for the larger pieces and even designated my new office, a small room in the middle of the apartment, as a place where the walls would be filled with the detritus of my life – awards, family portraits, diplomas, framed sentiments from friends and colleagues – but there was a lot left over. Ultimately, I had to hang art high and low, covering the walls like those in the Cone sisters’ apartment, although not, like theirs, filled with Matisses and Picassos. Much as I love my art, it will never hang in a museum. When I described this process and the results to a friend, he asked which Cone sister I was. Even though I’ve lost ten pounds, I had to answer, “Claribel,” for I could surely lose anther 20.
Within a week, I had the apartment in order, everything put away, the art hung and the lighting focused where it’s most effective. Some adjustments will of course be necessary – that little painting on the wall there will have to move down a couple of inches – but I’m now “at home.” Still, strangely, I don’t yet feel at home. While I’m very happy with the way the apartment turned out and pleased that, by and large, I’ve created a new environment with things I already had, and am surrounded by familiar manifestations of my personality, I feel a little strange here, somewhat like I’m living in a grand hotel. I guess it will take a little time to call it “mine.”
Years ago, an acquaintance with a somewhat acid tongue, and who had been in my house a few times, bumped into me at an art opening where she said, “Oh, Phil. How nice to meet you here. It’s the first time I’ve seen you without your living room,” a comment that’s a testament to my essential association, at least to some, with my surroundings. While she couldn’t say that now, I’m sure there will soon come a time when that sentiment will again be accurate, when I’m finally “at home,” at home.
Stay tuned.
