It's 2:10 a.m. as I write this, with bags and boxes and suitcases and paintings and the other miscellanea of my life piled around me. Tonight is the last night I'll spend in this apartment, 402-404 7th Avenue in Park Slope, where I've lived since I was 22 and almost totally new to New York. My studio is on the top floor, and I can hear the rain roll over the roof as I type, as it's pounded above me many nights and lulled me to sleep, like the sound is another blanket. I've been wonderfully taken care of by this apartment: It's a beautiful space, in a good neighborhood, with many friends, comforts, and conveniences nearby -- which is why I haven't left for eight years, when most of my friends have moved apartments every three or four years at most. But that's also partly why I feel ready to move: There is still a lot of twenty-two-year-old Cheryl here, when thirty-year-old Cheryl is a different person, older, presumably wiser, ready to have a different life, not to mention room decor.
(Thirty-year-old Cheryl is also terrified by the change, needless to say. But breathing deeply, and hoping.)
I don't have anything profound to say here, or a good narrative ending to round this off. It's too late to think, really, and I have to be up early in the morning to finish packing. But here's an invocation to last as long as this blog or the Internet does: I am grateful to God/the Universe/what-have-you for leading me to this place, and I hope the same will continue to bless the people who live here, and me elsewhere.
(Thirty-year-old Cheryl is also terrified by the change, needless to say. But breathing deeply, and hoping.)
I don't have anything profound to say here, or a good narrative ending to round this off. It's too late to think, really, and I have to be up early in the morning to finish packing. But here's an invocation to last as long as this blog or the Internet does: I am grateful to God/the Universe/what-have-you for leading me to this place, and I hope the same will continue to bless the people who live here, and me elsewhere.