anatomy of a space 1

In just over three months, I’ll pack my boxes and leave the 550 square feet that have been a refuge over these last two years. I’ll drive west to kentucky in a uhaul truck and unpack my boxes in something a bit more sprawling than this little studio in the middle of philadelphia. This city has tried me in so many ways. I’ve been yelled at, shoved, spit on, and nearly hit by a dozen taxis. I’ve found a deli where I can get a perfect egg and cheese on a bagel for $2.49 on Saturday mornings. I’ve sat on blanket in fitler square on august afternoons reading the new yorker and pretending that I wasn’t bothered by the horns honking and the dogs barking. I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit at my favorite yarn shop on south street because it’s been the one place--besides my studio--where I’ve felt truly at home.

And yet I realized this morning that I’ve done a poor job recording this actual space. For all my gestures toward limited square footage, I’ve not really documented its physicality here. I haven’t shown my tentative and temporary decor, the way that I’ve settled in only so much, knowing that I’d leave here before too long. But I want to be able to remember this space, the last in which I’ll live alone. And so here begins a small anatomical series to help me remember...and perhaps to help moderate my inclination years from now to romanticize this little box.



This is where I sit. In the mornings and the evenings and all day on the weekends. I bought this sofa from the previous tenant because it was cheap and neutral and the "good" couch went with J to kentucky. The side table and lamp were her's as well. I guess that means that this space is hardly my own. But J and I did buy the pillows when I first moved here. We went to a home decor shop and had this amazing afternoon with a flamboyant salesman who asked us "what story do you want to tell on your couch?" I kept laughing, but then totally embraced his inclination toward decorative narratives. We decided we wanted to tell a warm and autumnal story, and so we went with the reds and brown. The throw is a recent wedding gift from pals in Maine who must know my inclination to snuggle up.

The print on the wall--and I'll probably get this story wrong--is a rubbing from a Belgian church that my mom's childhood friend Greg made as a wedding gift for my parents in 1972. I've had it for a long time, though only recently have I really begun to look at it. This new seeing was mostly prompted by J's horror when we were rehanging it: "My god, that's the baby Jesus on your wall!" J doesn't take much interest in decor, at least not unless it strikes him as even vaguely christian, and thus somehow obliquely offensive to his occasional jewish self-righteousness. Jesus aside, though, I like the rubbing because it's so familiar. My Dad and grandfather made its frame and its back is a panel from a 1970's refrigerator box. Perhaps I should hang it backwards as a reminder of their inventiveness and frugality.


This is, obliviously, a close-up of the side table. Again, the lamp and table came from the pre-occupant. The rest is my own and not a particularly nice arrangement, but all its parts matter. The orchid that refuses to bloom again--though it seems perfectly happy--was a gift from my advisor, Eliza, after I passed my oral exams in 2006. I like to think of it as the one beautiful thing that came out of that experience, but it would make me far happier if I could coax it to send out a shoot of flowers. It's haphazard bowl I threw in 1994, before I went to college and during a summer in Michigan when I was fascinated by a christian scientist in my pottery class and apt to spend my free time flirting with lanky guy at a coffee shop who would become one of most important people in my life. The delicate yellow vase in the background is from my sister Molly's foray into raku. And then there's Arlo, looking forlorn, as he was usually did, and J and I on our wedding day. I still can't really look at pictures from the wedding without feeling somehow strangely nervous. But this one doesn't make me too dizzy.

So that's space one with more to come.