Gotham Diary:
Where Were We?
12 March 2013
At the back of my dream, I knew that the clank was too close. Nobody should be making that kind of noise so nearby. But as I snapped awake, I remembered. Things are different at the moment. There were four men standing outside the bedroom window, going about their business. Which is great, really, because it’s raining today. I didn’t notice that at first (by now I was in the blue room), because the puddle on the balcony is a byproduct of boring the new holes in the concrete. I had to peer down at the rooftops to see the gloss of rain. In a little over an hour, while Kathleen had her tea and toast but did not read the Times because she was just too sleepy, the men finished what they had to do, boarded their gondolas (there are two, one of them L-shaped), and cast off. The racket that they’re making one floor down seems more distant than it is.
Our neighbor who runs the great Mexican restaurant across the street reports that she’s got her balcony back. “We lost it for a day or two, because they put the partitions in the wrong space, but now it’s done.” The man across the hall told me that his balcony’s railing is complete, but that the partitions haven’t been installed. When I come out of Gristede’s this afternoon, I must make a point of looking up at the building — you can glimpse our side of it from there — to see what’s what. Our side of the building is unlike all the others, because there’s a setback that interrupts the line of balconies — abbreviates it, actually. The overall floor plan changes at the fourteenth floor (or is it the twelfth?), where the wing that runs out along 87th Street tops out. (You can see a corner of that in the picture.) This configuration means that a special gondola had to be constructed just to deal with the balconies between the setback and the twentieth floor, a job that was put off until everything else had been done. I do hope to see railing soon.
It is unsettling though — very unsettling. There is the noise, but far more invasive is the presence of strangers on the balcony. We have had that space to ourselves for thirty years. It’s one thing not to be able to use the balcony, and quite another to see other people standing outside on it. The workers speak a foreign language that I took to be Spanish at first, but, if it’s Spanish, it’s a dialect that omits all the words that I know. We never make contact with the workers; there’s no reason. While they’re outside, we have to stay inside. Eventually, after the partition has been installed, someone will undo the bolts holding the plywood in place that makes it impossible to open the balcony door.
But we have already forgotten what it was like to have plastic tarps over the windows. Will noticed right away. “I can see the buildings!” he exclaimed. I wonder what he remembers of the balcony. For weeks, he would head straight for the door, only to run into the huge planter of ivy that I decided to hold on to and cannot wait to put back outside. Recently, Will makes a beeline instead for the blue room, which serves as a garage for a small fleet of trucks (some of which are not small).
Did I mention the subway? The explosions, lately, have seemed very distant, as if they were coming from 83rd Street, where the alternative station entrance will be. If I live long enough to ride the new subway line, I will forget the upheaval that attended its construction. I know this from experience. A few years ago, our driveway was rebuilt (it’s the roof of a health club below), and the inconvenience was massive — that I remember. The inconvenience itself I forget. I can’t even imagine how we lived through it!
So now I’m teaching myself to anticipate oblivion.
***
Meanwhile, I suppose I might say a word about The Daily Blague, which is not the Web log that you are reading. You are reading The Daily Blague / reader. After a spell of quiescence, The Daily Blague is running again; that’s where I post the links and comments that, most recently, appeared here under the “Beachcombing” rubric. You can post comments at The Daily Blague, and you can get there by clicking the link in the banner above. I recently ordered a new set of little business cards from Moo.com, in which I stipulate that this site — the / reader — deals with “Life & Books,” and that The Daily Blague is concerned with “Links & Comment.” I wish that there had been room to print “Life & Literature,” not only because it sounds better but because literature comprises, in my view, film. In any case, I’m going try to restrict my harebrained ideas for world improvement to The Daily Blague, which, in its return to the simplicities of early blogging, is as close as I can come to Twitter.