Home, Body

Beatrice Modisett
1/20/2022

**Cross Posted to Bushwick Mutual Aid and Buy Nothing Bushwick/East Williamsburg/Ridgewood (Unofficial)**

*..:*:.:*:.:*..:*:.:*:..

#curbalert #offering 

Admins, please delete if not allowed. After many years here and thanks to going fully remote I’ve decided to leave the city and the NYC WFH paradox to chase after my dream of living on Biscayne Bay.

Corner of Woodward and Himrod is a really cute armchair that used to sit in my Nana’s sunroom before I inherited it.. It could use a reupholstery but it has good bones. I am sad to part with it but just won’t have the room and my new home is a walk up. Assorted kitchen items and children’s toys are also available. Pick up by Tuesday or it’s all headed for the landfill! 

From a smoke/COVID free and pet friendly home. 

INCREASE YOUR EFFICIENCY! 

RESULTS GUARANTEED! 

No insurance? No problem!

Employers pay all upfront costs for this groundbreaking and life changing procedure.*

Cut down on unnecessary walking and stretching and impress your boss today!

*Additions may only be used in accordance with employer/employee contract and remain the sole property of the employer in perpetuity. Any items not clearly affiliated with increased production on behalf of the employer are strictly forbidden. Including but not limited to: acorns, pinecones, small, smooth rocks, loose change, sea glass, shells, bits of moss, notes from a lover, photographs, sentimental jewelry, handwritten recipes handed to you by your Aunt after a really wonderful meal, stickers from a niece, extra shoelaces, seeds, bits of paper with a phone number from the person you clicked with after having one of those awkward “you go, no you go, no you go” moments at the grocery store, dried flowers, handkerchiefs, hand warmers, lavender sachets, snacks that are not to be consumed during work hours, decaffeinated tea packets, condoms, pocket knives, hand sanitizer, loose change, or Chapstick. 

The apartment they moved into years ago was spacious and open with unobstructed acoustics and sight-lines from front to back. She appreciated the rest the long view gave her eyes, and after work each day she and Fern could easily laugh about the absurdities of their commutes or fill each other in on their days while one was in the kitchen and the other tended plants forty feet away. This lack of delineation and literal boundaries in their home led to the lack of intangible and intellectual ones as well - it was optimal for hosting dinner parties and book clubs and falling deeply in love. Even once both their jobs went remote they were elated that the apartment kept it’s open floor plan. 

The changes started slowly and they started with color; beginning last February but maybe before. The curtains, the area rugs, the first towels either of them had ever bought instead of just inheriting threadbare ones from an older sibling - even the peperomias and pothos began to take on a new tint despite impeccable care.

There was a door to the pantry now and the coffee table had grown slightly too large to maneuver around without bumping a knee or stubbing a toe - especially while holding too many dishes or books. The hair and dust and skin seemed to not respond to attempts at collection and stains in the sheets could not be dissolved. The leak in the kitchen now caused flooding on the sunniest of days and the radiators hissed even when they were cold. 

When the rooms began delineating themselves months later, they painted the new walls together, but the colors they chose kept shifting and sliding between transparencies and opacities - until the two women found themselves surrounded by the unnameable. 

She took to taking long runs through the cemetery after Fern moved out - it was a place where she could breathe into the horizon and consider the ever-evolving textures on her ceilings. The changes at home had started to feel more intimate. Personal and pointed. One evening her pillows disappeared but were replaced the next day with ones she found really supported her neck quite well. Her air buds never stayed where she put them and when she finally found them the playlist was never what she chose, though she did find some interesting new music that way. She once came home to a bookshelf filled with some of the beloved texts Fern had taken with her and photos of her favorite hikes and celebratory dinners of the past would appear on her phone. The wood ash that had been added to her carefully tended compost bin was frustrating at first, but the added calcium, potassium, phosphorus and magnesium encouraged her echinacea to finally bloom. 

People, mostly family, asked her why she would stay in such an unpredictable place, but she had spent her whole life walking towards the liminal. She admired the intuitiveness of her home. It’s considered responses and careful criticism. She admired the potential too: the decay, the dark, shifting, moving, breaking, frozen, melting, breathing. She felt consumed by the instability, and not knowing whether things were collapsing or forming, she held hands with herself and embraced it.

Exhausted. 

Chrys woke up, sat up. Exhausted.

Nine hours of sleep and somehow still. Exhausted.

Their - YoU’rE LuCkY YoU hAvE a JoB - started in two hours with a foggy drive that consumes half the time.

No need to really be there, to put box after box after box after box onto shelf after shelf after shelf. 

Just the body, just the cog. The arms, the legs, the muscle memory. The money makers. I can afford rent, I can afford Maruchan. 

They laid down. Turned to pulp.

Dear Chrys,

A list:

A   Disassociate!

B   Get the fingers and toes and throat and clothes out the door.

C   The body performs the functions - you do the work they can’t see.