On Stoops and Balconies, Part 1
love songs for LiMiNaL sPaCeS (why do i love them so much??)
The wood is rotting and splintered but soft like punch bark or a tree trunk overgrown with moss. The sky spills blue into eternity and is mostly cloudless but busy with stars. The street is quite empty, respite from the relentless daytime whirr. We live at the uglier end of avenue du Parc but this nightly routine of claiming solitude on our front stoop has given me a different perspective and I now look at the Orthodox shul across the road and see not greyscale glass panels but a Mondrian painting. There are always lights on in there, people busy and pious deep into the night. Religion waits for no one. The sacred is ever present. I have a degree in religious studies but little religious fealty of my own, and just the same prospects for a job as had I not done an arts degree. I suppose what I do have is a huge amount of faith which, thankfully, makes me less afraid of my unemployment. I don’t suppose - I know. Can one quantify faith? Is it a propulsion? Is it either there or not there? Can we find it, grow it, cultivate it? Is it there all along waiting to be uncovered? I laugh at my devotion to questioning and light up (another) cigarette, PinkPantheress on loop. The Hasidic men start to leave the Mondrian painting and seep into the pavement. I adore this scene and look forward to it at the end of every shift; writing in the darkness, inhaling pop music, religiosity and nicotine after seven hours of speaking french that I’m mocked for and serving countless cones of fries. Vous voulez du ketchup? De la sauce picante? Where better to return than our front stoop? Any stoop, really, but what a treat that this is also home. For these hours it is only me and my journal, existing in our own kind of symbiosis, breathing life into one another, evidenced only by ink stains on page after page after page. Music, writing; writing, music. Sometimes I wonder if this is what a doctor hears when they listen to my chest. Then I remember that I am terrified of doctors and have refused to go for about seven years. So I write and I listen to music, because this is how I know to take care of myself. I take to the stoop as though it is my altar, words and lyrics the flesh and blood of… something. Tomorrow morning (or rather, in a few hours time) when I leave the front door to begin my day, I will shout “good mooorning world!” to the busyness of cars and children and uncollected recycling and hipsters and shops and pious neighbours. I will linger on the top step of the stoop, take in my surroundings, feel overwhelmed with gratitude for the simplicity of this nativity scene, and the cycle will repeat. This is my morning ritual, short and sweet. I will descend the stairs, softening the wood with my footsteps, and live my day, present and in anticipation for when I get to return to the stoop to perform my nighttime ritual. I say that, but there is nothing performative about it. It is solitary and delicious for me and me alone. No matter what the day holds, be it contentment or anxiety, I know that the stoop will be there when I finally come home from work, eager to share in whatever went on since I left it that morning.
A girl in a faux-satin zebra striped two-piece cycles by, her hair billowing as she sings into invisible oncoming traffic. I know it’s not real satin because I have the same set and I smile because I have been that girl so many times. Why am I so afraid of using my voice yet sing without second thought when I walk down the street? Again more questions. Again no answer. I am unsure when I began this post-work ritual, but I cherish it. What I do know is that when it began it was hot enough outside to be too hot at 1 a.m. and now it is only a thin jumper and stubbornness that blankets me from the approach of winter. My degree taught me that attachment is the root of suffering, but I can’t let go of what the summer was, nor how it felt on my skin. And one thing I know I will never surrender is my love of front stoops. I will only surrender to it. At this point, my love is devotion.
Our stoop has little to contribute by way of aesthetics. Our friends a couple blocks down the road have a beautiful, ingratiating sweep of concrete steps leading up the their front door, a glass-fronted gallery and bar their downstairs neighbour. The Schwemerald (self-titled): their very own kingdom. I have whittled away hours perched on these steps, steps far more ‘interesting’ than our own. They are the runway to a scene, the pedestal upon which the weird landlord with even weirder boots resides, entrance into a world that feels far away and uncomfortably out of reach despite its literal proximity. Do I want to be part of a “sceney scene”? No, but also yes? Whatever. But, for all that these steps hold, they are not a stoop. Conversely, our slightly decrepit wooden grotto is the epitome of one. Steep and annoying to descend in the snow, to be dreaded when carrying up a suitcase, the altar of my nightly ritual, hooded with a paint-scratched alcove that means that even if it is pouring with rain you can still sit out there and be dry and in awe. Everything I could ever hope for. Once we had an impromptu party that was not in fact a party but a large ‘hang out’ on the stoop, lasting long into the night and in the way of neighbours who needed to get into their front door. Luckily, they were kind and said nothing and secretly I think they wanted to join us. Not that we were doing anything in particular, just hanging out, drunk on friendship and saccharine night air. A very, very happy evening. The month that took place became known as Electric May (2022), very much a month of moments that screamed, “my life is a movie!!!!”, chaotic and fun and leaving me in a daze. Exhaustion and exhilaration all in one. This often tends to be the case when the warmth arrives in a wind-wrapped parcel, signalling the departure from long and cold and (at times) painfully bleak Canadian winters; the excitement contagious, the city a hive of work-and-play bees buzzing with the anticipation of the unique bliss that is summer in Montreal. Tralalala. I LOVE IT. I LOVE STOOPS! Together they are perfect match, like croissants and coffee (I am flanked by both as I write).
What is it, though, about stoops that tickles me so? I flit between a sense that they are spaces burgeoning with potentiality, and a sense that they are nothing more than a great place to sit and bide time. I like how uncomplicated that is. Stoops are less complicated than balconies, not that the latter are algebraic, but they are slightly more… complex? I don’t know how to explain it. Just imagine them as two kinds of people, both wonderful just one a little more… nuanced, than the other. I will have to leave it at that for fear that digressing further will create more confusion, and right now I feel more like a stoop than a balcony. Straightforward. So, onwards, light brigade! (The caffeine is hitting, perhaps I should walk to Sunset Boulevard to move some energy?). I haven’t found a good stoop in Los Angeles, where I am at time of writing, but I have only been here three days. To speak to potentiality, this is a city full of it, so likelihood is I will find a stoop to perch on. Might require befriending an Angelino. This hasn’t been a problem the past few days, so I have faith. I always do. And whilst I may not found a stoop just yet, I have found out many things about myself. Like my penchant for snot-green acrylic nails and a love for a city I have never wanted to come to. It is funny how life works. Back in November when I was spending nights at the altar, writing about how I was about to move to an island in British Columbia, watching men exist as Mondrian colour-blocks, I would never have thought things would be cut short and I would spend time in the City of Angels. I guess the angels had my back.
*** We interrupt the present ramblings to inform you that the anthem of Electric May (see above) has just come on my Spotify Radio and it feels serendipitous and synesthetic. No longer am I in an agonisingly “trendy” cafe in Los Feliz, but I am back on my front stoop, dusk approaching, friends on their way to join me. Listen here ***
There is no end goal of this piece. No deep philosophical musing about the spiritual significance of stoops. I tried writing that but it sounded so trite even if I believed it nonetheless. So I think I might just leave it here. My love is uncomplicated, like stoops themselves. It is stalwart and enduring and holds the promise of potential. At moments like this, where I find myself writing for writing’s sake reminiscing over songs once canonised and distracted by dreamlike memories, I am reminded of my heartbeat that no doctor will ever hear, each pulse a step up to the altar of nightly rituals and good mornings to the world.
Mouthpiece of relg stud assoc
From stoop to swoop is just a letter away.