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In today’s essay, we’re at the end of a cycle. I started these weekly essays when I moved to a 5-month sublet in a small village, Valatie, in upstate New York where I knew no one. Today, five months later, it’s my last day in Valatie.
Work to Be Done
Today is my last day in Valatie. I’ll miss this mug, I thought. It’s been good to me.
In Valatie, when I get up, I heat water in the electric kettle to make pour-over coffee. I always drink the coffee out of the same mug: a white mug with a comforting curve to the base, adorned with an abstract pattern of blue vines and flowers. Both the mug and the electric kettle belong to my landlord.
Before, when I lived in Brooklyn, I heated water in a heavy red stovetop kettle and made French press coffee in a one-serving press with a periwinkle blue plastic lid. I drank it from a handmade ceramic mug. When I came to Valatie, I couldn’t imagine having my coffee any other way, so I brought all of these things up here: the stovetop kettle, the French press, the ceramic mug.
I never unpacked them.
Valatie gave me a new routine, surrounded by different places and objects. I have to leave the objects behind. But, over time, they’ve changed me.
On Thursday, my Valatie neighbor and I made a harrowing trip to Brooklyn in a U-haul truck to clear out my Brooklyn storage unit, which had become like a time capsule. Why did I keep the things I kept, and discard the things I discarded? Why did I keep a gag gift of nipple tassels and throw out my broom? It was strange to confront the me of five months ago, and to make peace with his decisions.
I am not the same person who packed that storage unit, fleeing Brooklyn in the middle of winter in a new-to-me car I barely felt comfortable driving.
Before I leave Valatie, I’ll be sending my chapbook off to the printer. This feels right. These were the Valatie essays, all of them written right here, on this couch, right by Kinderhook Creek.
I’ve become a better writer, writing these every week. Partly because when you do something, that’s how you learn that you can do it. I didn’t know I could write an essay every week until I tried. But also because Valatie is where I learned to be a technician with my writing.
There were days where I took pages and pages of writing and cut them up paragraph by paragraph, rearranging them on the generously sized living room floor until they made sense.
When I did this, I was reminded of my grandfather, who, I’m told, would sometimes take apart the family car to repair it, the pieces all over the driveway. He usually had it back together by supper. But if he didn’t, he was unperturbed. “Work to be done,” he’d say, and go in and wash his hands for dinner.
“Work to be done,” I whisper, when my writing isn’t coming together, when I can’t smooth out the wrinkles. That was what Valatie gave me. “Work to be done.”
A sense of enoughness around time and space. That if something doesn’t come together right now, maybe it can later, or in another way.
Last night, my neighbor gave me a parting gift, a small precision-milled cylinder of stainless steel, designed to be perfectly calibrated to a particular size and weight. He said it seemed right for me, this strangely perfect piece of metal, as he knew I was in the process of moving away from perfectionism toward greater space and ease.
Today I prepare to leave Valatie, and I send my chapbook to the printer.
I’m reminded of the last lines from E.L. Konigsburg’s children’s novel, Up from Jericho Tel, which jumped out to me when I read them almost 25 years ago:
I knew I would make mistakes, but I knew I would be wonderful.
And I did.
And I was.
When I first read those lines, I didn’t know that you could make mistakes and still be wonderful. Now I do.
Thank you, Valatie.
My chapbook is now available for pre-order!
The thirteen "Valatie essays" -- the ones you may recall reading here from January to March of this year, now revised, reorganized, and freshly presented alongside stunning artwork from Shea in the Catskills.
$18 includes shipping. Pre-orders ship by June 16, 2022.
fantastic and inspiring news Finn!
💕❤️☮️