A Diarist's Blue Period
MARGOLIS, RICHARD J.
States of the Union A DIARIST'S BLUE PERIOD BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS I have rented a small apartment in Washington, on 17th between P Street and O Street, and am commuting there on alternate weeks...
...That ended the dialogue...
...Beautiful, isn't it...
...Saturday...
...That comb's for black-type hair," she explained...
...The only way we're going to get more apartments is by abandoning controls...
...Applauding his thought if not his orotundity, I go out to buy a book...
...I hate to say this," she answered, "but it's created a terrible housing shortage in Washington...
...Let's face it," says a third, "sooner or later Baltimore has got to go Communist...
...McGrath-who said she was active in city government...
...The desk could go where the bed had been, the leather chair could face the bed...
...a desk without a chair...
...Dolly thought the place had "potential...
...Shopping, for example, can be a puzzlement...
...Friday...
...It is probably cheaper to eat out, and certainly more appetizing...
...What do you think of rent control...
...Thursday...
...Back to my apartment, where I read Shapiro's "Travelogue for Exiles," a short, sad apostrophe to the uprooted...
...In the first place, it is very small...
...See in Native Son how Bigger Thomas gently teases his girl...
...After a quick browse through this sub-market I could understand why all the neighborhood restaurants are so well patronized...
...He didn't say considering what...
...As she passed by a little knot of young black men, one of them detached himself and started following...
...I asked...
...Cans and cartons are coated with dust...
...On my way out I stop to admire an antique Spanish desk with heavy mahogany carvings...
...it will serve less for meals than for poker...
...Here are some early impressions...
...a box of picture hooks, the better to hang my supine batik...
...I tried to buy a comb today in a little general store, only to be told by the black woman behind the counter that I'd made a mistake...
...Socialist meetings are really a drag," says another...
...in the second place, it is very dirty...
...she wears a blue bandanna-the color of my batik...
...a jar of instant coffee without a pot...
...It was given to me by the artist, perhaps to remind me of Connecticut, and it lies on the floor awaiting a hook...
...the storekeeper is auctioning it to the highest bidder...
...A dozen eggs go for just under $2, and a medium-size jar of Taster's Choice costs $4.99, a dollar more than what I pay at my capacious A&P in Connecticut...
...It was a sensible argument, but being a tenant, I didn't like it...
...Well, I have been in Washington too long...
...The only thing was, I'd arranged the furniture all wrong...
...Surely, there, surely, they will let you pass...
...Look upon this land, Far, far across the factories and the grass...
...The sofa bed should be moved inward so that people sitting on it wouldn't have to look at the kitchen...
...That once belonged to the Cuban ambassador," he informs me, "but of course they shut down the embassy 17 years ago...
...Trotsky is dead," says one...
...In a moment he had caught up with her and taken her arm...
...What do you hear...
...When Nixon went to China, the chic hostesses in Georgetown vied with one another in serving their guests sumptuous, 16-course Chinese dinners...
...I return to my apartment, double-lock the door (a burglar with taste may covet my batik), and head for a taxi that will take me to Union Station...
...Every gourmet shopkeeper in possession of a case of oolong was hoping to make a killing...
...It'll drive them into other people's apartments," he helpfully explained...
...It turned out to be a leaflet warning me and other tenants in the city that we'd all be evicted if we didn't make a lot of noise protesting the City Council's plan to lift rent controls...
...At the same time we installed some miscellaneous items: a large black leather chair and stool...
...Speak then and ask the forest and the loam...
...The bacon is turning senescently gray and some of the thin steaks are curling at the edges...
...The table I want is large and round...
...I pay for my coffee and ask the waitress if I may steal the plastic Trio ashtray for my apartment...
...Monday...
...They've got no use for that desk any more, which is all right with me...
...The young men are drinking beer and talking at cross-purposes...
...a typewriter table without a typewriter...
...Look and remember," the last stanza begins...
...Now the Cubans are opening up some sort of office again, but they're going modern in their furniture...
...It will be good to get back to the wide open spaces of Connecticut, where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the telephone's ringing all day...
...My friend advised me to sprinkle the insects with boric acid...
...Birth of a library...
...Tonight, after dining with three friends in Chevy Chase, I brought two of them back so they could pass judgment on my apartment...
...Conversely, I am told that several Korean restaurants have had to close down in the wake of the Tongsun Park scandal: No politician in his right mind would be caught dead these days eating a South Korean egg roll in public...
...No, the proprietor of the store tells me, he's out of that model, but he's expecting another shipment in next month...
...I found one later at the Safeway on R Street...
...You want a white comb...
...Later I read in the Post that several thousand tenants had rallied the previous day, and that the Washington City Council-true to the tradition of governing bodies since time immemorial-had decided to postpone action on the controversial question...
...At noon I attended a luncheon at the Women's Democratic Club, where I met a young woman-a Mrs...
...Living in a mixed neighborhood is pleasant after spending nearly two decades in the monochromatic exurbs, but it has some disadvantages too...
...This store may be the shoddiest link in Safeway's lengthy chain...
...I place Karl Shapiro in the exact middle of the gaping bookshelf...
...We don't have any...
...and a bottle of Mexican beer without an opener...
...Heaven must have taken a recess this morning to have sent such an angel down here...
...So the canny furniture dealer will turn a fancy profit, all because of the thaw between Carter and Castro...
...There's a silent girl, too...
...Tuesday.The bookcase has three shelves, all of them empty...
...Its cover is blue, of course...
...It is the first time in 17 years that I have spent any appreciable time in a city-in a place, that is, where one depends on the kindness of strangers...
...At the table next to mine sit six bearded youths with peace signs and astrological pendants bouncing beneath their adam's apples...
...OK," I said, "then give me a white comb...
...With time on my hands before the noon Metroliner leaves for New York, I walk to the Capital Office Furniture Store on K Street to see if I can pick up a table like the one a friend bought there recently...
...The retailers in this strange city have to pay close attention to shifts in national policy...
...Just take...
...This morning I found an "Eviction Notice" lying at my door...
...They were walking stride for stride now-and as I turned down another path and threw them a last, backward look, she was smiling...
...Surveying the scene now from my leather chair, I see that I have something new, something old, much that is borrowed, and one thing that is blue-a lovely batik of two rural mailboxes standing crookedly amid tall grass...
...But first I stop at the Trio for a cup of coffee...
...Tom said it was "pretty nifty, considering...
...At the Discount Bookstore on Connecticut Avenue I buy a slim paperback volume of Karl Shapiro's poetry...
...A placard on top of the desk lists the bids made thus far, with every one but the sixth and latest bid having been crossed out...
...It is a teasing, tripping language, full of joyful confidence and as sweetly poetic as anything one is likely to hear at the Abbey Theater in Dublin...
...it confirms all that one hears about ghetto groceries...
...a table lamp that turns on with a twist of its metal stem (the harder the twist, the brighter the light...
...They go from $4,000 to $7,500, and there's plenty of room left on the cardboard...
...The earth is taken: this is not your home...
...Lord have mercy," he called to her...
...I bought a sofa bed today at a place called Little John's, and with the help of a friend and his pickup truck carted it to my apartment...
...Walking across Du-pont Circle early this morning, feeling the urban sun melt the night mist, I heard a really stunning example of black blarney...
...A room without a book," said Cicero, "is as a body without a soul...
...The lettuce is brown, the tomatoes wrinkled...
...Several cockroaches crawled out of the woodwork to have a look at the new, temporary tenant of their permanent digs...
...in the third place, it is shockingly expensive...
...a wooden bookcase...
...Wednesday...
...Black blarney I define as what black men say to women they are courting...
...The Lord giveth and the landlord taketh away," I said lamely...
...The blarney in this case was direeled at a pretty blonde who was walking ahead of me...
...For want of a nail a batik was lost...
...Much of the food displayed here was apparently tossed into the bins weeks ago and then forgotten...
...Don't ask," she replies...
...In any case, I needed a rug...
...States of the Union A DIARIST'S BLUE PERIOD BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS I have rented a small apartment in Washington, on 17th between P Street and O Street, and am commuting there on alternate weeks from my home in Georgetown, Connecticut...
...As they were leaving they presented me with a house gift...
...My neighborhood seems predominantly black, with a generous sprinkling of Puerto Ricans, Vietnamese, Koreans, and whites...
...What does the land command...
Vol. 60 • November 1977 • No. 23
