Late last night, I paid the two men (with their truck), gave them one last gulp of organic raspberry juice (they never tasted anything so good, I am told) and went looking for food. The restaurant orbit changes here. The east side is farther. The west side, my home of two years back, I still regard as a smudge on the culinary map of Madison. A Chipotle’s burrito will do. With several glasses of champagne – a gift from my builder.
Everything feels new. The way the light falls on the couch, on the computer. Wow. Stunning. The way the brushed steel hasn’t been touched a million times with olive-oil saturated fingertips. The way the channels don’t match the previous ones, so that Tour de France is no longer on 28 or anywhere else.
Ah, but newness is good.
The carefully configured corner, from which I am now writing.
And, waking up to contemplate the view from my bed for the next months. (This:)
To walk to the grocery stores. To meet neighbors. All that is good.
I unpack slowly, deliberately. I don’t mind discovering deficiencies (four cabinets—no interiors. Oops.). It’s part of moving here: it’s new, the interiors are fresh.
My balcony door is open. I listen to melodies played on a harp. One of my neighbors who teaches harp, moves her instrument outside to practice.
Why would anyone not like it here?
Ed says: the place reminds me of the buildings I so happily moved away from in New York.
Does it?
Okay Ed. Those are your devils.
Me, I don’t feel one way or another about highrise trappings. Indeed, some are sublime.
And I have to smile at the fact that my condo building is considered a highrise on the Madison skyline. It is 12 stories tall.
I take a moment off from unpacking. I walk over to the store, pick up a copy of our local weekly, the Isthmus. An unexpected surprise – a photo I had sent on a lark (one from this day – guess which one?) got a prize. Good sign. My photos are doing okay. I’m doing okay.
And from the rooftop, where neighbors gather each evening, the view is not all that removed from what I left at the loft. So there.
Ah, love.
