Every day since I moved into my apartment on Uspallata, I’ve woken up with a sense of urgent excitement in my chest. Feelings have places, and this one wants to go somewhere. I cross my room in two steps and open the obscenely heavy metal shutters that part onto my small balcony. I am level with the trees, and I can hear the leaves and conversations and bike cassettes, and sometimes even silence. Noticeably absent is the jackhammering: relentless, flagrant cracks that indiscriminately penetrated adjacent buildings and shattered sleep and sent it from our bodies six days a week in November. Those days I woke up with a different feeling, not coming from my chest but between my ears, sharp, high-strung, needling…
In the Uspallata place, I take my chest feeling to the patio where it spreads, and nourishes, and is nourished. The back patio of the house is tiled, bordered by spined, arching plants, and ones with bulbous, orange-tipped leaves, and other overflowing succulent pots. It is shadeless; enclosed by 8-foot cement walls with glassed windows that concentrate the sunlight and humidity, preventing any stray breeze from frustrating its imposition. The spell can be broken with Coke and fernet poured generously over ice.
The apartment has high ceilings and a terrace above the patio where the breeze reaches and there is respite from the sun, and I let my feelings run along the patterns in the tiles. Yesterday I welcomed overwhelming sadness for the first time in a long time, and I was so happy to feel sad, and I felt it in my breath and exhaled it over the balcony and listened to the silence.
This blog was originally mailed on Feb 18, 2024.