We are moving, moving, moving. That would sound glorious if not for the painful fact of the ten-month escrow we have already endured. Yes. You heard me. Ten month escrow. I don't even want to get into it. I have tried to reach my zen buddha place and I've come up short. The bookstore high doesn't even work. Yes. It's that bad.
- There was the waiting for five months -- which we expected.
- There was the waiting for five MORE months -- which we did not.
- The scheduled & rescheduled & rescheduled-again walkthrough.
- The "Hi! I know you are at work and most likely do not carry such items on your person, but do you think you could fax us your passport, social security card & birth certificate in the next five minutes so we can get it to the bank in time?"
- The "Yes, I know it's our fault the building we are restoring is not ready on time, but it is YOU who will have to pay many, many dollars a month to keep your interest rate locked. Yes, that's right, YOU must pay for every month WE are late." (Wherein, the developer is WE, and I, the lowly YOU.)
We wanted to do something we believed in. Live in an old building in the gutted section of downtown that deserves to become the hub of LA once again. Just blocks from skid row, we will be in the first building on city record for converted residential lofts in the Artist's District. It was an old factory. 82-year-old bricks and hardwoord floors that have many stories to tell, I'm sure. It is imperfect. It is adaptive reuse. It is unpredictable. It is lovely. There are still remnant tracks where trains would pull through the building to pack and unload cargo.
It will make a difference, possibly. It will be challenging, definitely. The other artists who live in this community are sure to enrich our lives and our work. I have been thinking and dreaming and planning this space since I first laid eyes on it well over a year ago. It makes the writer in me want to write -- indefinitely. It is the light . The vast open space and all that light just streaming in, threatening to crack me open and listen to me while all my stories come spilling out onto the page. I am ready to crack...small fissures are making themselves known. My stories, all of them, are waiting to be told.
If we could just get in the damn thing.
