A Blast From The Past

I found this paragraph, written in early 2002 when the first room of our apartment was about to be dealt with. It bears reprinting. Also, I have been charged with providing history. I'm interpreting this as a desire for pictures of what has come before, along with commentary. I promise to deliver what I can, with the promise that more detailed photo's of these rooms will come after the stacks of boxes now stuck in corners are removed. Until then I hope to deliver history and tidbits and anything else I can think of.

FROM THE PAST (EARLY 2002)

Yesterday afternoon I moved all of our furniture and clothing out of the bedroom and arranged it in the living room, recreating the feeling of living in the studio apartment on East 83rd street. Bed is opposite couch, desks are squeezed in corners, floor lamps are on top of chest of drawers—we have been shoe-horned again! Actually it has a kind of a cozy and romantic feeling—holed up in urban cramp with your babydoll.
The moving of the funiture marked the beginning of what I know to be a very long journey. This morning however, I am well aware that the crossroad is here and now. I can always spend a couple of hours before Leigh comes home for lunch moving all the furniture back. I could even vacume and dust and re-organize, hoping that these good deeds take the curse off of my apparent cowardice. The fact remains—it is possible to stop the madness now! No damage has been done, no ceiling removed, no wall stands agape, the closets still exist… In three hours all will be different. I will have hung some plastic in a near futile attempt to stop the dust of demolition, I will have moved up from the basement a few of my favorite ‘wrecking’ tools, and I will have fired the first shot. An action that will cause that familiar chain of reactions and actions and reactions that will define my free time for months and maybe years to come. Joe Coomer’s book Dream House lays on my desk which is now only eighteen inches away from my bed. I’m getting a sort of dull ache in the usual places in my back and the thought of grabbing Coomer’s tale of building his house by a pond and propping my head up on three pillows to ease the cramps is looming large.
Nonsense! Armed with my two stalwarts, earl grey tea and WNYC, I steel myself for the first volley over the bow. Truth be told, I am of course full of anticipation. A wonderful place to be. A little like early on a Christmas morning when I was a child, waiting at the top of the stairs for the rest of my brothers and sisters to awake. The vision of what I have planned—that wonderfully elegant, comfortable, warm, gorgeous bedroom—bursting with linen and light and trimmed with sturdy white oak with a kind of ‘Early American’ tone is crystal clear in my head. And that is what will sustain me through the toil. And that is what fills me now with invigorating anticipation.

More demolition details to come.