City life

"Whatever you may think of me. However bleak be the outlook/give me a page/carve lines for my rage/fuck your sage/genuflecting in that cage you think I can't escape from/pass me two metaphors/an alliterative phrase/three verbs/a well-placed noun, or two, is all I need to craft a tale of epic proportions/throw me an arc/a plot/a slot to present it/to someone/anyone, then watch me write the story of a girl who simply refuses to die."

I ran across those words by Jamaican LGBTQ poet Staceyann Chin, and they climbed right inside me and made me stop and read them again and again. So I'm putting them here, so I can find them whenever I need to remember that I can carve lines for my rage and write my way out of any cage, too.

I was out of my house a lot this week, as I've joined a Tai Chi class that meets on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, as well as a choir in the neighborhood that meets from 1:30 to 3PM on Wednesdays. My neighbor and friend Lisa is in that choral group with me, and we look forward to singing our hearts out every week, and catching up on our lives while traveling to and from rehearsals together.

That's the church sanctuary where our choir meets. I was fascinated watching a plasterer working from the scaffolds erected in front of the lofted stained glass windows while we serenaded his labor. We sing in masks, and it seemed very strange at first trying to get to know a new group of people whose lower faces I couldn't see, but somehow, in this new reality we inhabit, we are all starting to play nice with one another, exchanging names and stories, and revealing faces after practice once we're back outside on the New York City streets, laughing and waving as we take our leave, singing scraps of songs. 

I also traveled to lower Manhattan on the hunt for bathroom tiling options with my friend Jane on Thursday morning. We went to the Tilebar NYC showroom, which has been called the Apple Store of tiling places. It is indeed very shiny and spacious inside and the tiles are beautifully displayed. Jane and I wondered if they'd be too snooty and highfalutin' for the likes of us, but the sales people were lovely, and I do think I've settled on the wall and floor tile options for the front bathroom in our apartment. Our bathrooms are both quite small, and I have fairly simple tastes, so I'm going with a 2 x 12" white subway tile that has a slight relief on the surface, just enough to catch the light in interesting ways but not so much as to be a distinct pattern, something like in the picture below. 

I had also flirted with a Mediterranean or Moroccan style patterned tile for the floor, but my man hated it, and since I love him, I am going with a 4" white hexagon tile that is very slightly marbled with gray, the softest watercolor brush strokes rather than hard distinct lines, again just enough to add interest, so I hope. In this endeavor, I am holding on to what my friend Lisa said to me when I was losing my mind over whether I was making the right design decisions during the kitchen reno. "It's just a kitchen," she said. So my mantra now is, "It's just a bathroom." One that will soon be sparkling clean and new, no matter the tiling options. I'm eventually going to refresh the second bathroom, too. In that one we will swap out the tub to create a walk in shower (my whole body arthritis isn't getting any better), and I plan to use the same long subway tiles on the walls, but for the floor I might go with white penny round tiles as they seem to give a very classic and airy feel in the pictures I've seen. But I'm taking it one day, one set of decisions, at a time. 

Work wise I am at loose ends, but for the magazine editing gig, for which stories come through intermittently. I turned down an interesting book project because I am waiting and having faith that the book I really want to do will come my way, though this may not happen until the New Year. Nothing is certain, but if that book for which I wrote the proposal is indeed mine to do, then I don't want to be tied up with something else and unable to accept the job. So I'm doing a lot of jigsaw puzzles these days, going to Tai Chi classes, singing in a choir, binge watching Bad Sisters and 1883, and hunting for the exact right tiles that will please both my husband and me. This, I think, is what some might call a gentle life, and I'm grateful to be living it. Still, I want to do something useful for more than my own little self. The truth? I don't really know who I am or what my purpose is when I'm not busy working.