House of Dreams, the cat shelter where I met Olivia, held their spring plant and vegan baked goods sale on Saturday. The timing was perfect; in this new apartment, my plants no longer formed the dense, thick jungle they had downstairs, and I longed for more greenery to fill the space. The sale was in someone’s backyard, a beautiful space sheltered by towering cedars. I chatted with a few people I knew and adopted some new leafy children in the hopes that I would not immediately slaughter them.
After that, I had lunch with a friend, and then dinner with another friend who was down from Seattle. We went to the Alibi, a Tiki lounge that has been around since the forties. All in all I had a good weekend, and felt closer to normal than I had in a while.
And then, after the disappointing news from my doctor, I crashed, feeling more hopeless than ever. In the wild, it makes sense that the bad things leave deep, lasting impressions, while the good ones dissipate quickly. But it doesn’t help us much now that we aren't chased by wolves that often. When depression descends, it’s easy to forget I was ever happy; or if I do remember, it only serves as a cruel reminder that I no longer am, and probably never will be again.
It suddenly struck me that I refuse to learn the lesson presented to me by my shrinking world: that we must appreciate the small things, that we must show gratitude for every gift we are given, especially that of life itself. I don’t appreciate the small things. Beauty rolls right off me like water droplets off a waxed car hood. And despite all the hardship I have not become more compassionate or humble or thoughtful. Worst of all, I have not learned the lesson that has been hammered into me repeatedly over this past year, that of patience. If anything I feel more impatient than ever, unable to just sit calmly with myself for even a few moments, despite the fact that I have nothing but time on my hands.
“You’ve been so strong,” well-meaning friends say, but the fact is, I am not strong. I am not resilient. I am not brave. I am a broken machine running on automatic pilot, a zombie lurching forward because I don’t have the will to do otherwise. I am given this opportunity to be off work, to spend my time however I like (provided it doesn’t involve walking around much or spending much money) and I can’t seem to do much other than mope. Which then gives me a wonderful opportunity to indulge in some delicious self-loathing for wasting my one precious life. Really, I have earned this confinement. This is the purgatory I always yearned for, why can’t I just learn to stop worrying and love it? Why do I steadfastly refuse to nurture these sprouts the universe has so generously planted in me?
I woke up the next day still feeling miserable, and knew I needed to get out of the apartment to distract myself. I headed out to a Goodwill on the other end of town. I had never found anything good there, but I needed a destination. And though I didn't really want to admit it to myself, I was secretly looking around for a new drawing table. I have a desk, a nice little rustic secretary I found at a junk shop last year. It fits perfectly in the little writer's nook I've made in the walk-in closet. It's perfect for writing but isn't great for drawing at.
I've never had a decent table for doing art on. When I was 13, my grandfather bought me my first drafting table; one of the few kind things he did for me. It was cheap and ugly but I have a strong memory of riding in his yellow pickup to go to Boscov’s to pick it out. Years later my stepmother bought me a folding drafting table at Blick. It served me well though over the years it had started falling apart. I had finally gotten rid of it -but only reluctantly, because Jasmine had drawn at it. I tried a few other tables over the years but was always limited by my cramped quarters, and had never found one I felt comfortable at. My latest experiment was a shaky, spindly thing that someone abandoned in the trash room.
Last week I had seen a huge, beautiful professional drafting table in a thrift shop. It was magnificent, but it was also a beast, and I knew I would never be able to get it home. Besides, did I really need that much surface area? I don’t make large works on paper, and I have my easel for big canvases.
As I expected, there wasn’t anything of interest at Goodwill, but before I left I swung through their meager furniture department. There were a number of antique wooden cradles, and a single nondescript wooden desk. I walked past the desk without really noticing it, but as I was leaving I took a closer look. It was a perfect size, not overly large but bigger than what I had, and sturdy but not heavy. The top was beautifully worn with use; the whole thing appeared to be hand crafted, with a set of drawers on the right side. And it was only ten dollars.
I stood there looking down at it and found I couldn’t walk away. I felt hypnotized. I was frozen with indecision. They hold furniture for 24 hours after you pay for it; I could certainly handle throwing away ten bucks if I couldn’t get someone to help lug it home. I suddenly grabbed the tag and started texting friends as I hobbled to the counter.
N. said he could be there in an hour. I crossed Halsey and sat at the Starbucks to wait. They didn’t have any indoor seating area so I sat out in the drizzle as a bunch of high schoolers shrieked around me. One of them sat at my table and stared at me. I ignored him and he went away.
The desk fit perfectly in N.’s hatchback and we got it home and upstairs with no problem. I shoved the old desk out of the way and pushed the new one into its place. It was perfect. Olivia jumped up onto it immediately. After being in such a terrible mood and feeling like I couldn’t go on, the pleasure I felt sitting at this desk was a shock. I couldn’t remember the last time I had adored an inanimate object so much. This simple thing was by far the nicest, most substantial desk I had ever owned.
I sat for a while and watched the blurry traffic far below me, stared at the forlorn highway trees that I knew would grow to seem like familiar companions. I ate dinner on the table, distractedly reading a New Yorker article about paying attention. The sky was bright but mottled with clouds. My new plants hung in the windows, not yet dead. Olivia meowed insistently and dropped her stuffed chicken at my feet. My big, nice, airy new apartment was now complete. I was finally home. And for a few moments, in that brief window of time before the waves of misery could start crashing back in, I felt something that resembled, that may have actually been, contentment.
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