Oct 22, 2004
Moving sucks. First a month or so of hell - intense pressure to pack up 26 years into cardboard boxes in a month's time. Now the pressure's gone. But the tsoris remains - I'm living in cardboard hell - boxes everywhere, I have to walk sideways through narrow passages that we've left to negotiate from room to room. And where is everything? Today Stacey suddenly realized that she forgot to empty one of our kitchen drawers.
I feel quite beat up. My back aches. My knee is blown up, the victim of moving heavy boxes up and downstairs, kneeling on the floor installing our new stove and microwave. Today I ran a water pipe to the refrigerator so it can produce ice and cold water. We moved dozens of boxes into the backyard (under a shed roof that will somewhat protect them from rain). That, so we can get into the rear guest room and build shelves to hold at least some of the contents of those blasted boxes. Our friends have offered storage at their country house for at least some of those containers. And maybe the landlord will allow some more storage in the basement. And I think, we'll just have to part with stuff that we haven't been willing to throw out. Again, if you haven't seen this stuff for five or ten years, then does it really exist?
I know that the time will come in a month or so when we can say we're settled. But for now it's unsettling, confusing, depressing.
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Last night we walked around the corner to Vanderbilt Avenue and discovered a lovely Italian restaurant - Aliseo. The owner, Albano, has a heavy Italian accent and hails from the Marche region of Italia and so the cuisine reflects that origin. It's a small, warm and cozy room with wallpapered walls and a tin ceiling. The food was delicious. A real find.
Earlier, we walked over to the Brooklyn Museum and met our friend Tamar. She's a public school art teacher and uses the museum regularly as a teaching tool for her students. We had lunch at the cafeteria and took a tour of two current shows: John Singer Sargent and his portraits of children from before and after the turn of the last century and a more contemporary artist, Kehinde Wiley. He's a young Black artist who uses Black males as models. He discovers them on the street, interviews them briefly in his studio where he allows them to peruse the great classical portraits painted through the ages. He then asks them which pose is their favorite and then photographs them in that very same stance. He bids his model farewell and the painting is made later from those photos. They're large works that blend the classical pose with a portrait of young Black man man dressed in modern street garb. Add a touch of very colorful whimsy and a dramatic juxtaposition of the old and the new. A video shows the young artist at work in his Harlem studio.
Young Black man as a saint ascending to heaven?
The neighborhood is, from my first glance, wonderful: diverse, young and hip. And the politics? I've never seen so many Kerry posters in so many windows. Not to mention the derisive Bush signs in house after house. I love the brownstones and I love walking down the side streets that run from our place on Underhill Avenue over to Flatbush Avenue.
This is a biking neighborhood for sure. Our street is very quiet with very little car traffic. But just three blocks away, Flatbush Avenue is a major artery and is overrun with trucks and cars. Walking or bicycling is the way to get around. And the neighborhood kisses all the other neighborhoods that I love so much: Park Slope, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Clinton Hill and Brooklyn Heights. Manhattan is just minutes away as well - by car or by subway.
In future blogs I hope to document with word and picture just what this new neighborhood means to us and why we like it so much. Please check back.
