Yesterday was another day in which the list of things that made me smile was as thin as the gruel served in Oliver Twist. It was gray and rainy and by the end of the day it was a struggle to name three things that made me smile: the painting I own of a speckled bird riding a red bicycle through a park, my friend from LA texting to see if I’ve found a place and settled in, the poetry and language of Stephen Dunn. Aside from a short trip to the grocery store for bananas, wine, an avocado, and a cooking spoon, I didn’t get out much. Because it was pouring rain, I didn’t take my post-dinner walk around the neighborhood – which is almost always good for at least one smile.
I spent part of my day yesterday trying to determine (and writing about) whether I was happy, jealous, or skeptical about a friend’s rekindled relationship with a guy she dated five years ago. As I plumbed those depths, I was aware of, and slightly nagged by, the fact that it was five years ago this week that I got engaged. At times, the challenge in both the thinking and writing was to ensure that my own feelings about past relationships weren’t creeping in to what I wanted to be an honest assessment of how little I know about this friend. Ultimately, the writing was, like so many of the internal contradictions I explore here in this blog space, an exercise in futility, an attempt at biting my own teeth.
As I frittered away my time, I was also distracted by my upstairs neighbor. I don’t know my upstairs neighbor. She’s younger, has curly hair (blondish/reddish), has a dog (maybe a hound or a chocolate lab). When I first moved in, she had left a note on my door saying she’d be out of town for a few weeks and someone was staying there or stopping in to take care of the dog. Call or text if it’s too noisy. Yesterday, we crossed paths on the stairwell as I was coming back from the grocery store and she was taking her dog out. She didn’t say hi, and she almost seemed annoyed that I was in her way and petting her dog. I didn’t have much of an option he/she was blocking my way up the stairs and sniffing at my grocery bags (the dog, not the neighbor). A few minutes later as I was downstairs starting a load of laundry, I heard her come back into the building. She was sobbing as she climbed the stairs and I had that awkward moment of being a hidden witness to someone else’s pain.
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard wailing and weeping from the apartment above. Being a bit of a storyteller, my mind begins to concoct stories for what’s happened or who she might be: a manic depressive who frequently has sobbing jags; someone who just lost a parent; a bad breakup and they have to share the dog; I’d speculate on the loss of a pet, but I saw the dog alive and well; someone who has been let go in one of the many rounds of tech layoffs… When I wasn’t considering life’s many tragedies, I was exploring my own all-too-human awkwardness – why didn’t I ask if she was ok or if she needed anything? Why don’t we offer support when we see someone in distress? It’s messy. It’s not our place. We don’t want to be drawn in. People are often embarrassed to be seen in such a vulnerable state – by which I mean I’d be embarrassed to have someone witness my sorrow…
She left the apartment and came back again. This time, there was a lot of excitement – she was speaking in that high-pitched excited tone to her dog “who loves you, who loves you, I do…” or something like that (it’s always muffled). Her tone seemed like an over-correction of sorts – perhaps a way to pull herself up and out. From the sounds of it, the dog was happy and pranced around. Then I heard a different neighbor knocking on her door. I’m pretty sure he’s an unofficial (or maybe official) building manager. I thought I heard him say in a concerned, wellness check type of voice “so-and-so, open the door.”
This is the part of city living that I had forgotten about (or never really experienced) – the proximity to other lives, to other joys and sorrows. I don’t remember hearing much from my neighbors in Memphis. In Philly, we only heard the neighbors when they were arguing or having sex. There’s a very unvarnished and human element that’s almost inspirational in all of this. Seeing/hearing people sob doesn’t bring me joy. It’s not going to make the daily list of things that made me smile. But there’s a vitality to being a part of this thrum – all of these individual lives, all of these fish swimming mostly in the same direction each with their own thoughts and struggles and moments of joy or clarity or confusion. It’s humbling and big all at the same time.
I don’t consider myself to be an extrovert or a people person. Quite often, I think we’re rude, messy, self-absorbed, and lacking in kindness. But it’s hard not to feel connected (even in the most superficial ways) to something beyond the self when you see so much of humanity on display every day. The same street corner plays host to a man sleeping on a flattened piece of cardboard one day, a poodle pissing on a street sign the next, and a couple kissing hello after several days of being apart the day after that. Even on a slow day when the smiles may go unnoticed and are difficult to recall, the internal multitudes and vacillations are reflected in the world outside of my thinking and my apartment door… and I’m here for all of it.