Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me(38)

“Mine is,” I responded.

He didn’t seem to hear me.

“Do plants feel?” O said.

He looked at me like I held the answer, but continued on: “Certainly they do, but they cannot respond to feeling as quickly as we. Plants are rooted in the ground. They can move, yes, but not at the speed that an animal can. It may take years for a tree to grow, days for a flower to bloom. Is it speed then that differentiates us—this capacity for speed? You could do time-lapse photography of a vine crawling and see that it does, indeed, move, but one would have to speed it up a thousand times to match the speed with which an animal can react to threats or changes in the environment the way a human can.”

O tilted his head, seemingly focusing on a corner of the room. “Yes, perhaps speed is at the essence…”

_____________________

6-15-14:

O: “I like having a confusion of agency, your hand on top of mine, unsure where my body ends and yours begins…”

_____________________

7-22-14: I was standing in the kitchen last night making dinner for the two of us and a thought came to me: This is the happiest I’ve ever been.

I stopped myself: Is that true?

I kept doing what I was doing, making dinner, sort of testing the feeling; O was talking all the while; and I thought, Yes, yes, it is true.





PART III


HOW NEW YORK BREAKS YOUR HEART





Couple Under Glass





MY AFTERNOON WITH ILONA


I rang the bell for Ilona’s apartment at exactly three o’clock, the time we’d arranged for my visit, and she buzzed me in. “You’re almost there,” she called from up above the stairwell when I’d reached the second floor. Her building had no elevator. At ninety-five years old, Ilona goes up and down the three flights several times a day—“Keeps me young,” she had told me.

Ilona had called me a couple of days earlier, saying she wanted to give me a gift—a thank you for the photographs I had taken of her and the prints I’d given her. “It will only take a half hour,” she had said.

The door to her apartment was open just a crack, and she peeked out, her face like a bouquet of oranges, blues, and greens, a ribbon of red at the lips. “Come in, come in, make yourself at home.” I squeezed through the narrow opening; the door was open just a crack because it could only open that far—stacks of things behind it prevented the door from opening fully.

Ilona had told me her place was very tiny—like herself (she stands about four foot ten, and weighs no more than ninety pounds). She added, “Don’t be surprised by anything you see,” which sounded at once like a warning and an invitation.

Even so, I was taken aback: the room was tinier than I could have imagined—just one small room, with a half bathroom to the right; no kitchen; and a single window. There was a double bed raised high off the floor to the immediate left, just after the door. Stacks of things—books, magazines, boxes—towered. Opposite the bed was a small chair surrounded by more stacks—I can’t even quite say what all these things were—creating a kind of island with just a narrow moat around it. The walls were lined floor to (almost) ceiling with more—boxes, books, clothes, and paintings—colorful canvases of landscapes and portraits. The wall opposite the door was mirrored, but the mirror was only visible at the very top, for it was covered up three fourths of the way.

By my description alone, one might think this tiny space was the home of a hoarder. But that would mean I am giving the wrong impression. Even though this small room was extraordinarily packed, there was no whiff of madness, of decrepitude. Things were colorful and soft (fabrics, clothes, hats). It smelled nice, clean. Everything was within reach; I supposed she needed nothing more. This was simply the home of a small person who had lived here for sixty-six years, and had sixty-six years’ worth of things.

“I’m glad you could come,” she said in a sweet, gracious way.

I was still dazzled, as if adjusting to bright sunlight after coming out of a tunnel. I thanked Ilona for having me and, with her permission, put my camera, bag, and jacket on her bed.

Ilona was dressed more casually than I’d seen her before when taking her picture in the park. She wore a brown caftan with some sequins at the neck, a blue visor in her bright orange hair, and she was barefoot. She had her extraordinary eyelashes on, inch-long eyelashes she makes out of her own orange hair.

She quickly got down to business. I was here for a reason, not just a social visit: She told me she was going to make a drawing of me. “You took my picture, now I’m going to make a picture of you. Let’s have you sit here”—she gestured toward a chair in the island right next to the bed—“the light will be better.”

I smiled to myself; there was literally no other place I could have sat, except for on top of the bed.

I asked if I could help, but she insisted, No. I watched as this very small woman moved things from the chair so I could sit there, in the process creating a new stack. Her movements were slow and tremulous—Ilona has a sort of Parkinsonian tremor—but deliberate. “Here, try that.”

I sat. Ilona frowned. “Too high. I’m very short, you know.”

I chuckled and nodded.

I stood. She took more things off the chair—more books and magazines that had been stacked atop it. “Okay,” Ilona said, “I think that should be good.”