Durham, NC: Coming Soon

After voting (for the good guys, of course), I walked with Liz and the dogs to Duke's East Campus, where I had a couple of books to return to Lily Library and Liz catches the bus to West Campus. Walking down Morgan Street, approaching Papa John's, watching billows of dust rise over the horizon of the Shell Station's roof, Liz suddenly mused: "We live in the middle of a construction site." I concurred.


We feel this way, I think, not only because we currently live in West Village, where Phase II is in full swing. And not only because we hope to move soon (more on this later) into the Trinity Lofts, which will still be a work in progress even after we're settled in our unit, which will be among the first two competed and occupied. More generally, it seems that everywhere you go in Downtown Durham there's either construction going on or signs indicating that you are standing at the threshold of a future site of construction. The feeling of living in the midst of this is mixed, both hope and anxiety, like standing in line for concert tickets crossing your fingers you'll get to the front before they sell out.

The Buddhist in me reminds myself that this is a healthy reminder of the ultimate impermanence of things. That is to say, the importance of enjoying the present moment, with all its ups and downs. Life is in the transitions, as William James says. It will be fabulous when more of the Dreamed Downtown Durham is actualized. But any act of completion sets the stage for future change. The world just isn't static. There's nothing that rules out the possibility that our lofts will be repurposed into warehouses of some sort or another 80 years from now. I could launch into an extended tangent on cyclic versus linear models of time, but I will spare you the grief!





So, another week has passed, and we have still not closed on our loft. Seems that it took longer for the ground to dry than they thought. With no dry ground, no paving of the parking lot. And with no asphalt covering that gloriously dry ground, no Certificate of Occupancy. So we wait, and hope that early next week will finally be it, that we won't have to postpone our move yet again. This extended state of limbo leaves us feeling a bit topsy-turvy.

But, hey, don't those numbers look great!

And check out the detailing on the front and back gates:

Hopefully, this primitive, though charming, piece of grafitti will remain as well:

So while I wait to hear word of progress, I savor these small design details. And, what do you know, Tuesday rolls around and by the end of the day the lot is paved.

Now the machinery of moving starts cranking again. The only way to reach a state of relative equilibrium once again is to momentarily amplify turbulence. And once we're in the new place, I'm sure we'll discover all sorts of home improvement projects that we want to tackle.

The wheel just keeps on turning.