The Big Empty by CoreyBlack
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Description
Apartments are expensive in Chicago. If you're a starving artist like myself, you usually have to share the rent with someone else. Frequently, Someone who seems normal at first rapidly degenerates into some form of psychosis that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Volume 04, Text Revised doesn't have a name for yet.
In 2006, after nearly a decade of roommate purgatory I finally had the chance to get a place of my own. (I'd had a few good roommates, but the number of bad ones is so incredibly high that it blocks the good ones (Chip) out.) It was a large studio on the top floor of a 3-flat with huge front windows that let in great light and a largely unobstructed view of the sky: that great, moody, ever-changing Midwestern sky. The unit was configured so that I could arrange my furniture and easile sit on the toilet and watch tv through the open doors of the large, walk-in closet that opened into the main room. How cool is that? I was ecstatic! No more crazy roommates! Peace! Tranquility! I could walk around all day, naked if I wanted to. I could work unmolested on my Great American Novel until dawn. I could do whatever I wanted with whomever I wanted, any time I wanted.
Chip was over frequently. We'd cook chayotes and top them with sour cream and many other exotic delights from the local Mexican grocery. We'd hold endless Rockford and X-Files marathons and I was finally able to put my model cars on display. It was great.
Over time, however, several glaring flaws became obvious. I neglected to take into account that the building fronted onto a busy thoroughfare with an alley on the side. Drunks would frequently throw up under my window. There was a high school across the street and a fire station two blocks away. In the winter, the noise was muted by closed windows. But in summer, the racket was all-pervasive. To top it off, they began gentrifying the building next door. Suddenly there was the constant whine of drills, the banging of hammers, and the rumble of large trucks. Giant dumpsters appeared overnight and were filled to overflowing with foul-smelling debris. Clouds of dust wafted across the alley and into my apartment. Then, my landlord had the gall to raise the rent by $50. I couldn't get out fast enough.
Still you leave a bit of yourself behind, everywhere you go. And actually moving out was bittersweet as things like that generally are. An apartment always looks so big and empty after you've taken out all of your possessions. The place turns back into an impersonal box, awaiting the next tenant. It's almost like you were never there.
Photographed in the Albany Park neighborhood of Chicago on May 31st, 2008.
Comments (6)
beachzz
For a long time, I moved every few months. I went from my own little house near the beach, to camping out on a friend's couch, to sharing a tiny apartment with someone who started out as a friend and ended up not being one. But still, you do always leave a part of yourself when you leave.
Chipka
There is a part of me in every apartment or house I ever lived in, and the tragedy in that is that the people who live there now will never know...even as they move on and leave parts of themselves behind. I think that's where "ghosts" actually come from...they're the little fingerprints we leave behind...those memories that lurk in corners like peach pits that somehow missed the trashcan and wound up staying longer in the apartment than the resident who ate the peach and threw the pit away, missing the garbage can or bag. This shot is incredibly haunting and a bit melancholy in a poetic way. I remember that apartment as it's the last apartment I saw in Chicago before going to live in Prague. I remember where that microwave used to sit, and I remember the chayotes (the seed is always the best part!) and yeah...LOTS of X-Files and Rockford. This is a gorgeous shot. Deliciously moody. What a gorgeous and moody shot, and though I saw this BEFORE you posted it, and saw the apartment with that intriguing "hideaway kitchen" I really like the sense of mystery here. Oh, there are so many stories behind this image...well...within this image; I'm now itching to write something that takes place there! Or in its fictional equivalent, which might just happen to be on some far-out planet with a name like "Gamma Coreus 4" or something typically goofy in that science fictional way. This is a wonderful shot! Oh and I remember some of your roommates..."Lumba" especially...and we won't even mention "the Creature." I didn't live with them and I still get itchy just thinking about them, and "Lumba's" frightening dish sponge...jeez...that thing had to have either the cause or cure for something growing in it.
durleybeachbum
So evocative! Moving would kill me..or they could kill me first and then I wouldn't mind. Fab narrative and a loaded image.
myrrhluz
Wonderful narative. A beginning, middle and end of a relationship. The image shows the end. I like the heavy black sides, that narrow the focus to the empty interior. The microwave is out of place. An expectant, a bit lost air permeates the place. This air is intensified by the faint view of other windows, to other buildings, that seem to gently mock this empty room. This is a wonderful image that seems to describe a state of mind. The state of mind, when that which was familiar becomes alien. The worse entrance I had to a new home, was in Biloxi Mississippi. We came in on a cold and rainy night. We turned on the light switch, and the walls moved. Roaches. Big ones, little ones and really tiny ones. There was no furniture yet and we slept on the floor. Fitfully.
francinechristophe
Whow ! What an atmosphere and mood !
auntietk
Empty places always seem like an alien landscape to me. This is great. You've really captured the feeling!