They took away my sidewalk today.
You know that old parking lot across the street from my apartment building, the one with the rusty old gate and padlock? Well, they've finally broken ground on the new construction happening there - the former junkyard is scheduled to be transformed into five fancy townhouses with all glass sunrooms floating on wooden roofdecks. Downtown Brooklyn and the last outskirts of Boerum Hill are blowing up, all the sudden all of the parking lots are building sites, old buildings have come down -- demolished almost overnight, leaving gaping holes in the horizon which will soon be filled with scaffolding and cranes when the building sites go up around them.
It's impossible to walk down the street around here without having to cross the street when met halfway down a block with a sudden "sidewalk closed" notification preceding big plastic orange barriers. It feels as if the neighborhood is building up around me, and it always makes me think of that Chet Baker song... they're writing songs of love, but not for me. These new developments are not for me. I am not long for this world, this Brooklyn of the ever skyrocketing prices, this Boerum Hill of the million dollar one bedroom condos. My building will be sold, no doubt, at some point, and either leveled or gutted. It's being built up around me, but it is not for me.
Everywhere you turn, there is a building rising. I've been watching the slow development across the street with great trepidation. First, months ago, they cleaned out the lot and closed it up. Uh oh. This did not bode well. There were rumors of an Ace Hotel, and I pictured staring across the way from the window of my kitchen / living room combo into the boutique rooms styled to feel like old boarding house rooms, watching trendy advertising folk and photographers and models coming and going, smoking their cigarettes in front of the revolving doors out front.
Next there was a single lift one day holding three executive types standing maybe thirty feet in the air looking out through binoculars. Maybe they were scoping out the view? They were essentially level with my window, and I glared at them, tried to make it clear that they were not welcome. I'm sure it was very intimidating.
A month or two ago, they broke ground. I never thought I'd have cause to actually use that expression, but it is the term for what happened. They broke the ground. They are going to build on it, and I guess they need to dig the foundation. Since I've been stuck at home with unending migraines for weeks on end, this cycle of building seems even more torturous than usual. The second a jackhammer stops at one site, it is picked up a block away at a different site. It's amazing how far sound actually does carry when you don't want it to. So I lie here, head buried under blankets and pillows, trying to block out all the light and the sound, praying for an ounce of silence, a minute of peace, of relief from pain and misery. And the quiet, when it comes, is like a gift. But, it does not last.
Owen died in March, 2013, two years ago this month. I had spent the week preceding his death working from home, taking care of him after his surgery. He was dying, though I didn't get it at the time because I'd never seen someone progress from life to death, and I sat here day after day feeling the life sucked out of both of us. March is the most miserable month, a cruel month.
When I came back to my apartment the morning Owen died, I stood looking out my window. Across the street caddy corner to me, right across from the lot that will now be five fancy townhouses, is a very large old townhouse. I'd never seen anyone come in or out of it since I'd lived here, always wondered if it had an occupant. On the day that Owen died, I watched as a team loaded up a dumpster with all the contents from inside the house. Its occupant -- it had had one afterall -- must have died. And he or she must have been old. And he or she had no family there to clean out the house, just a team of guys wearing plastic gloves and dumping things into a large dumpster. I watched this happen and couldn't help but relate it to Owen's death. For three days, they cleaned out this old house. It's still empty, surely it will be gutted soon and tricked out with its own floating glass room on a roofdeck too. The property alone is probably worth millions.
So far, the construction across the street hasn't been as bad as I imagined it would be, but I know from experience of the other buildings that it will get there. There will be months on end of undying sound, pounding, steel hitting steel. And today, they committed the unthinkable. They took away my sidewalk with those big plastic orange barriers. I watched the guy do it, and I tried not to think poorly of him as I slowly walked by and scoped out the situation. He seemed like he probably had a family he was taking care of, and this was his job, and he was not stealing my sidewalk on purpose. But still. It seemed like an affront. It seemed like a personal attack. I won't see that sidewalk again for at least a year, maybe two. And they're writing songs of love, but they're not for me.
And what does this have to do with you, Dad? I don't know, except that it seems related to your death somehow. When they took the sidewalk away today, I felt something akin to actual grief. I thought, please stop taking things, stop taking my home. Because the more the buildings rise around me, the more I feel like this won't last forever, this home I've tried to build, and I'm all worn out on losing this year. Or maybe I'm just drawing a whole bunch of meaningless parallels and it only feels like it has something to do with you because everything feels like it has something to do with you, because I miss you in every ounce of sidewalk and every minute of waiting on line in a grocery store, and all the breaths I take and all of the thoughts I think.
a
You know that old parking lot across the street from my apartment building, the one with the rusty old gate and padlock? Well, they've finally broken ground on the new construction happening there - the former junkyard is scheduled to be transformed into five fancy townhouses with all glass sunrooms floating on wooden roofdecks. Downtown Brooklyn and the last outskirts of Boerum Hill are blowing up, all the sudden all of the parking lots are building sites, old buildings have come down -- demolished almost overnight, leaving gaping holes in the horizon which will soon be filled with scaffolding and cranes when the building sites go up around them.
It's impossible to walk down the street around here without having to cross the street when met halfway down a block with a sudden "sidewalk closed" notification preceding big plastic orange barriers. It feels as if the neighborhood is building up around me, and it always makes me think of that Chet Baker song... they're writing songs of love, but not for me. These new developments are not for me. I am not long for this world, this Brooklyn of the ever skyrocketing prices, this Boerum Hill of the million dollar one bedroom condos. My building will be sold, no doubt, at some point, and either leveled or gutted. It's being built up around me, but it is not for me.
Everywhere you turn, there is a building rising. I've been watching the slow development across the street with great trepidation. First, months ago, they cleaned out the lot and closed it up. Uh oh. This did not bode well. There were rumors of an Ace Hotel, and I pictured staring across the way from the window of my kitchen / living room combo into the boutique rooms styled to feel like old boarding house rooms, watching trendy advertising folk and photographers and models coming and going, smoking their cigarettes in front of the revolving doors out front.
Next there was a single lift one day holding three executive types standing maybe thirty feet in the air looking out through binoculars. Maybe they were scoping out the view? They were essentially level with my window, and I glared at them, tried to make it clear that they were not welcome. I'm sure it was very intimidating.
A month or two ago, they broke ground. I never thought I'd have cause to actually use that expression, but it is the term for what happened. They broke the ground. They are going to build on it, and I guess they need to dig the foundation. Since I've been stuck at home with unending migraines for weeks on end, this cycle of building seems even more torturous than usual. The second a jackhammer stops at one site, it is picked up a block away at a different site. It's amazing how far sound actually does carry when you don't want it to. So I lie here, head buried under blankets and pillows, trying to block out all the light and the sound, praying for an ounce of silence, a minute of peace, of relief from pain and misery. And the quiet, when it comes, is like a gift. But, it does not last.
Owen died in March, 2013, two years ago this month. I had spent the week preceding his death working from home, taking care of him after his surgery. He was dying, though I didn't get it at the time because I'd never seen someone progress from life to death, and I sat here day after day feeling the life sucked out of both of us. March is the most miserable month, a cruel month.
When I came back to my apartment the morning Owen died, I stood looking out my window. Across the street caddy corner to me, right across from the lot that will now be five fancy townhouses, is a very large old townhouse. I'd never seen anyone come in or out of it since I'd lived here, always wondered if it had an occupant. On the day that Owen died, I watched as a team loaded up a dumpster with all the contents from inside the house. Its occupant -- it had had one afterall -- must have died. And he or she must have been old. And he or she had no family there to clean out the house, just a team of guys wearing plastic gloves and dumping things into a large dumpster. I watched this happen and couldn't help but relate it to Owen's death. For three days, they cleaned out this old house. It's still empty, surely it will be gutted soon and tricked out with its own floating glass room on a roofdeck too. The property alone is probably worth millions.
So far, the construction across the street hasn't been as bad as I imagined it would be, but I know from experience of the other buildings that it will get there. There will be months on end of undying sound, pounding, steel hitting steel. And today, they committed the unthinkable. They took away my sidewalk with those big plastic orange barriers. I watched the guy do it, and I tried not to think poorly of him as I slowly walked by and scoped out the situation. He seemed like he probably had a family he was taking care of, and this was his job, and he was not stealing my sidewalk on purpose. But still. It seemed like an affront. It seemed like a personal attack. I won't see that sidewalk again for at least a year, maybe two. And they're writing songs of love, but they're not for me.
And what does this have to do with you, Dad? I don't know, except that it seems related to your death somehow. When they took the sidewalk away today, I felt something akin to actual grief. I thought, please stop taking things, stop taking my home. Because the more the buildings rise around me, the more I feel like this won't last forever, this home I've tried to build, and I'm all worn out on losing this year. Or maybe I'm just drawing a whole bunch of meaningless parallels and it only feels like it has something to do with you because everything feels like it has something to do with you, because I miss you in every ounce of sidewalk and every minute of waiting on line in a grocery store, and all the breaths I take and all of the thoughts I think.
a
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