My old apartment was for entertaining, and at one point, I was cooking elaborate dinners for ten, by myself, every weekend. At the last one I hosted, though, there was a chef. I thought it would be useful for my work to have a space into which I could welcome guests, lots of them, and it was. If you subscribe to the theory, and why not, that we are always responding to, and shifting energy around us, then I can say that leaving that place was as much about the noisy neighbors who made it impossible to stay as it was about being time for me to go on a personal level. My new apartment is much smaller, cozier, even more dimly lit; I often sleep in and spend my lazy late mornings and early afternoons looking out at the garden with a cup of tea, and a blanket on my lap. Friends who call think I must be speaking to them from another country. Almost no one has seen this place. Almost no one will. When my short lease is up in July, I'll move on. But for now, this little moment, this cocoon, this little suite of time and space that is intimate and wholly my own, suits me very well indeed. All of this is to say that I donated so many things –– art, gowns, jewelry, 1920s cocktail glasses right out of The Thin Man era –– to John Street Church's annual tag sale that a moving company had to handle it. That's later this week, October 16-17 (10:00AM-4:00PM) at John Street Church in Lower Manhattan.
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