If it has a cellar and a garret, nooks and corridors
Last night I went out to a bar I hadn't been to in ten years (indeed a bar I only ever went to grudgingly and for the $1 Pabsts until 9). I took a shared lyft, so I couldn't really control the route the driver took. I saw on the map that he was going to cross through 10th and Pine, and I decided not to say anything.
10th and Pine is an intersection I've been avoiding for the last year since I moved back to Philly. It's where my now ex-husband and I first lived together in a shitty one-bedroom apartment with the dog I adopted when I graduated from college (which seemed like a minor miracle at the time) and his cat. I'd been avoiding the intersection because I thought that if there was a place that I was consciously choosing not to go, it meant that somehow I was in control of something. I could compartmentalize so many of my anxieties into s 10th street between Pine and Lombard and by geolocating them, I could avoid them.
But when we drove down Pine and crossed 10th, I looked north toward Spruce. That apartment was actually south, toward Lombard. My memory was wrong. If I'd thought about it, of course, I would've gotten it immediately and turned my head and there it would've been, but the part of that house that is built into my muscles, the part that is just there in my subconscious, wasn't as well built in as I'd thought. It was a relief. If my memory is untrustworthy, then I don't have to trust it. I don't have to believe what it's telling me, because it lies and it changes and it will continue lie and to change maybe for better, maybe for worse.
So I went out, I met friends from a past life (my last life) in the bar that is no longer the bar it was ten years ago with the $1 pabst. Later, I got the ego-boost that comes with a serious flirtation with a serious crush. [The night ended with him running his hand up my thigh and then telling me he's in a relationship, but my self-esteem didn't take a hit (and to be clear, the rest of this story has nothing to do with that other than the benefit of the endorphins).]
So feeling emboldened, I decided to walk to 410 s. 10th street.*** The video store on Spruce (where we rented Freaks and Geeks on DVD) is something weird with flowers and teddy bears in the window, but the foodery is still there (if we want to play that game). the building is the same, the gate is the same, the courtyard is the same, and i didn't feel anything! last fall and last winter and last spring, i'd needed that placeholder as somewhere I could choose not to go with memories I could choose not to deal with. i don't think anything's different now in terms of how I am or am not dealing with the past (or the present or the future), except for some reason, I wasn't scared to walk down that block. I can't imagine I'll ever do it again unless i have to, but it was a nice rom-com moment for me.
I also went to the other house we lived in here. I got a shot of whiskey on my way, and when I got to 1624 Naudain I cried. Not because of loss or nostalgia, not because of memories of him, not because the relationship we started there ended in divorce, not even because at 34 I'm not where I want to be in my life and that pains me everyday, but simply because I loved that trinity on Naudain Street.
Gaston Bachelard has all these things he says in The Poetics of Space that almost sound right for me, but just aren't. He says “the house shelters day dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace” (6). He says “Of course, thanks to the house, a great many of our memories are housed, and if the house is a bit elaborate, if it has a cellar and a garret, nooks and corridors, our memories have refuges that are all the more clearly delineated” (8). But I don't really have memories of that house or in that house that I have strong feelings about. I just loved the building. I loved that house as a thing.
Sometimes the places you've lived, no matter how large they loom in your memory of the past and the way you deal with it in the present, are just objects. It was good to realize that they don't necessarily mean anything more. Its not really a rom-com moment moment after all.
***I didn't actually go to 410 s. 10th street though, I went to 415 S. 10th street because that's where I actually lived. I'd been remembering the number as 410 (undoubtedly because the street is 10), and I was so sure that was it, but because I know that memory lies, I looked up the address on my old Amazon orders, and it's actually 415 S. 10th street. Memory is not something to count on.
10th and Pine is an intersection I've been avoiding for the last year since I moved back to Philly. It's where my now ex-husband and I first lived together in a shitty one-bedroom apartment with the dog I adopted when I graduated from college (which seemed like a minor miracle at the time) and his cat. I'd been avoiding the intersection because I thought that if there was a place that I was consciously choosing not to go, it meant that somehow I was in control of something. I could compartmentalize so many of my anxieties into s 10th street between Pine and Lombard and by geolocating them, I could avoid them.
But when we drove down Pine and crossed 10th, I looked north toward Spruce. That apartment was actually south, toward Lombard. My memory was wrong. If I'd thought about it, of course, I would've gotten it immediately and turned my head and there it would've been, but the part of that house that is built into my muscles, the part that is just there in my subconscious, wasn't as well built in as I'd thought. It was a relief. If my memory is untrustworthy, then I don't have to trust it. I don't have to believe what it's telling me, because it lies and it changes and it will continue lie and to change maybe for better, maybe for worse.
So I went out, I met friends from a past life (my last life) in the bar that is no longer the bar it was ten years ago with the $1 pabst. Later, I got the ego-boost that comes with a serious flirtation with a serious crush. [The night ended with him running his hand up my thigh and then telling me he's in a relationship, but my self-esteem didn't take a hit (and to be clear, the rest of this story has nothing to do with that other than the benefit of the endorphins).]
So feeling emboldened, I decided to walk to 410 s. 10th street.*** The video store on Spruce (where we rented Freaks and Geeks on DVD) is something weird with flowers and teddy bears in the window, but the foodery is still there (if we want to play that game). the building is the same, the gate is the same, the courtyard is the same, and i didn't feel anything! last fall and last winter and last spring, i'd needed that placeholder as somewhere I could choose not to go with memories I could choose not to deal with. i don't think anything's different now in terms of how I am or am not dealing with the past (or the present or the future), except for some reason, I wasn't scared to walk down that block. I can't imagine I'll ever do it again unless i have to, but it was a nice rom-com moment for me.
I also went to the other house we lived in here. I got a shot of whiskey on my way, and when I got to 1624 Naudain I cried. Not because of loss or nostalgia, not because of memories of him, not because the relationship we started there ended in divorce, not even because at 34 I'm not where I want to be in my life and that pains me everyday, but simply because I loved that trinity on Naudain Street.
Gaston Bachelard has all these things he says in The Poetics of Space that almost sound right for me, but just aren't. He says “the house shelters day dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace” (6). He says “Of course, thanks to the house, a great many of our memories are housed, and if the house is a bit elaborate, if it has a cellar and a garret, nooks and corridors, our memories have refuges that are all the more clearly delineated” (8). But I don't really have memories of that house or in that house that I have strong feelings about. I just loved the building. I loved that house as a thing.
Sometimes the places you've lived, no matter how large they loom in your memory of the past and the way you deal with it in the present, are just objects. It was good to realize that they don't necessarily mean anything more. Its not really a rom-com moment moment after all.
***I didn't actually go to 410 s. 10th street though, I went to 415 S. 10th street because that's where I actually lived. I'd been remembering the number as 410 (undoubtedly because the street is 10), and I was so sure that was it, but because I know that memory lies, I looked up the address on my old Amazon orders, and it's actually 415 S. 10th street. Memory is not something to count on.