I locked myself out, officially, for the first time as a homeowner. Ordinarily, I have a spare key in a lockbox, but I’d tapped it days earlier and forgotten to put it back. Onto the locksmith, who quoted a 45-minute wait and recommended getting inside at least the front door to save me $100 on what could be a $250 bill. Could a neighbor help? While I chilled on my stoop, grateful yet wary that it was nearly 60 degrees in February in Washington, DC, it struck me — a person who reads a lot about and lives by the power of kinkeeping, practices mutual aid and is willing to make the first move — that after a year in Adams Morgan, I had only one neighbor’s number. And she was out of town.
In the ensuing 45 minutes, I met two neighbors in passing. Neighbor #1, who let me into the building, has lived there for 24 years and knows barely anyone herself; I’d never seen her before. Neighbor #2, the condo board president who’s stepping down soon, was a wellspring of information: a bigger group text exists among neighbors in the adjoining condos, the need for a new board member with fresh eyes (could it be me?), the heads-up that her boyfriend wakes up for work at 4 a.m., should I decide to jam out to Karen O on a weekday night in my bedroom again soon (my bad). In both cases, as I sat in my sweaty yoga outfit on carpeted stairs, I asked for my neighbors’ numbers in case, you know, I do something stupid again. Having their numbers wouldn’t have eliminated the need for a locksmith. But I live by myself, and embedded in that request felt like a small need for reliance should an emergency arise, as well as a pledge to respond in kind. The glaring question underscoring it all: What do these people owe me, and what do I owe them? What do I owe this place where I’m not, for the first time in my adult life, actually that transient?
In Jenny Odell’s “How to Do Nothing,” she unpacks this concept in the chapter “Ecology of Strangers.” In it, she wrestles with the difference between being “part of a community, versus just living somewhere,” and how shifts in attention can radically reshape or reposition our habitual contexts. She uses the term bioregionalism, which she’s said can give “a sense of home, a way to engage and feel a part of something at a time when everyone is pitted against each other and atomized.” Of course, as Odell writes, a lot of the inherent gap between a shared responsibility to a place versus a sense of inert impermanence is born out of gentrification. She quotes a passage from Rebecca Schulman’s “Gentrification of the Mind,” where the author notices longstanding tenants with lower rents in her building were more likely in some cases to “organize for services, to object when there are rodents or no lights in the hallways,” unlike “gentrified tenants (who are almost completely unwilling to make demands for basics” — a “weird passivity.”
Since I read Odell’s book in 2019, like a lot of women who survived the pandemic, I have adjusted my priorities more and more away from seeking satisfaction in the realm of career and toward more meaningful modes of ambition, with attention to “the personal and the complex, not just about rising through the ranks,” as Ann Friedman has put it. Two of my aims for 2023 have been to invest more in my creative practice as well as my community. The latter comes in part out of the privilege of owning my home and takes a few forms: hosting dinner parties, volunteering at a nonprofit cafe nearby, understanding how a homeowner’s association works and voting where I live. It’s also a more everyday consciousness of my surroundings and intentionality in conversations.
Haley Nahman explored the apparent trendiness of being antisocial while reflecting on an exceedingly friendly repairman who was super offline, a seeming relic of a past time. Two things stood out, as someone who also once felt I was an “outgoing introvert”: feeling more secure in myself and my relationships makes socializing even easier and appealing, and being more aware that the dumb wry observations I’ve made in conversations with strangers (versus half-baked generic questions) have led to lasting relationships. I told Neighbor #2 in my moment of vulnerability that I want to be more connected and pointed to some ways I’ve sincerely been striving for that. She encouraged me to consider joining the board and help take up some incredibly mundane tasks — arranging to get our outdoor concrete stairs fixed, and figuring out a better waste disposal system. I’m lucky to be feeling up and able for the challenge.
spotlight
No Vacancy, a fascinating piece about an experimental housing project in my home city of Philadelphia spearheaded by an activist who pressured the housing authority to allow people living in homeless camps to inhabit empty properties. And to get the deeds.
design break
There is simply nothing cozier than a Norma Kamali blanket coat, or more powerful than Rihanna debuting her pregnancy in a performance that exuded her own terms.
soundtrack
stuff i’m consuming
Welcome To The Shoppy Shop (NY Mag) — hat tip to the term “smallwashing” and the idea that so many stores selling things like textiles and tinned fish feel local to the internet, where we all live.
America, The Bland (NY Times). I hate these developments so much but appreciated the historical perspective that people astonishingly once thought Brooklyn brownstones were eyesores.
Single Women Own More Homes Than Single Men … despite the wage gap! (NY Times)
The Agoraphobic Fantasy of Tradlife … my nightmare (Dissent)
The newsletter Dinner Music, a total delight that has put me onto so many good playlists, recipes and bottles of wine.
Coffee at The Potter’s House, a nonprofit cafe and bookstore that’s been in my neighborhood for decades where I started volunteering a few weeks ago. One of the best parts of my weeks.