The Ground Beneath My Feet

For maybe seventeen years, from my 27th birthday on, my home base was a modified studio apartment in a converted factory building.  I call these my bachelorette years, despite the fact that I was married (twice), changed countries, became a mother; somehow this was where I ran, came back to roost, escaped, convalesced. When I first moved there, part of its charm was the Mobilgas  flying horse directly outside my front window.  Like a magical hovering hallucination, it witnessed and blessed my love affairs, my joys and sorrows, guested at my parties and celebrations.  At a point the horse was removed and a multi-plex theatre was built.  So there was still the rear window, where a sapling tree had grown tall enough to graze my sill and bring morning birds to sing to us in bed as we slept against the cracking interior brick wall of an old chimney. 

It was a cool old building, and because the apartments were like small lofts and recently re-purposed, it was mostly populated by young singles-- artists, several fashion models, a pair of Rockettes, a stripper, two drummers, a hair-stylist... photographers, drug dealers. My motley friends and rock musicians were comfortable hanging out there, crashing there, getting high with the English hipsters down the hall, smoking on someone's balcony or sunbathing on the roof.  It felt in a way more like a dormitory than a building.  We had the best parties that often spilled out into the hallway where neighbors were only too happy to open doors and spread the cheer.  

On Wednesday I went down to that neighborhood to preview an auction of great old rugs in what used to be a loft space but was now tarted up like a department store.  I barely realized I was in my old neighborhood-- the street was stacked with multi-storied new constructions that looked crowded and crammed and airless.  My old back window would have been hemmed in-- our little sill-sparrows, the maple tree-- would have been displaced.  I walked up to Second Avenue-- the old supermarket-- A & P, then Sloan's, I think it was, then maybe Pioneer-- and now a sprawling Chase bank.  My son's old school was sheathed in scaffolding and netting... even the movie theatre called Beekman was being demolished.  I remember there was one huge modern apartment building which stood out... now it looked a little aged and dated-- dwarfed.  Back then there were cyclical recessions; money was a little different.  Yes, there were some affluent couples... but their luck changed and at our state-sponsored pre-school we were often all in the same boat-- crumbling marriages, unfaithful husbands, Visa problems... buying each other cheap bags of chips or sharing ice cream among the kids.

I remember sitting on a stoop with an English woman who'd had two babies in rapid succession.  The children were adorable, but I was shocked to see they lived in this pricey high-rise with almost no furniture and a mess of clothing, toys, dirty plates and cups everywhere.   I remember the toddlers so well-- Harley and Alison. Almost like twins... they were unwashed and wild, tough and spirited, and their mother seemed to have aged twenty years in three.  Her husband had lost his job... one of those things... we young mothers spent long hours sitting on sandbox ledges, pushing swings, exchanging woes and intimacies.  Where are they? Who will remember them?  It has been some thirty years since I sat on the wall outside that building, astonished at the reality of what I'd imagined to be a charmed, rich life.

Forward to the rugs-- old, handmade things of great beauty.  The online catalogue was spectacular and shining.  It always touched me that the makers-- not just artisans but artists-- colorists-- took years of their life to create something that would be walked on.  The metaphor of hand-woven carpets is a kind of poetry. So I wandered through the newly-renovated space like an explorer... hung and lined with yards and yards of these patterned wool tapestries... and somehow, without the online photos-- they became what they were-- just rugs.  They were living, used... old, walked on... things of beauty but humble and quiet.  The price tags were obscene.  If they could speak, they would have been ashamed.  

At some point in college my boyfriend and I decided to make a rug-- we would design and execute a hand-knotted creation. We looked in museums, bought a book from the Cooper Hewitt.. and I spent many nights turning pages, inhaling the colors and patterns.  It was difficult; we were overwhelmed with studies and jobs and we abandoned our project.  But in my 120 year-old apartment, I have one of these rugs of similar vintage.  It was owned by others before me, and it occurs that it will go on living when I am gone.  It is a thing of great beauty and soul-- the colors, the small discrepancies and mistakes woven in intentionally by a person who lived perhaps in a colorless landscape without flowers or trees, and yet created a rich, rich tapestry of floral and chromatic mastery.  These rugs I assume were the gardens of desert cultures-- their windows and decor.  

During the pandemic, I occasionally took a photograph... and a piece of my rug would appear, like a magic vision. It is always, unlike me, photogenic; it steals the stage, even in a tiny corner.  I know all of its regions; I imagine the maker.  When I write it is here.. when I play music, when I turn out the lights... it is still here.  Unlike a garden, it asks for nothing and never fails me.  I do cringe when my son visits and occasionally spills a little whatever... but they are resilient, these old things.  Organic and uncomplaining. Voiceless, perennial... humble, rich, quiet and like a magic lamp maybe replete with more story than I can ever write, in this room we share-- my witness, my companion, my elder, urban floor-garden.