Wednesday, October 1, 2014.
I have no new photos to share.... I always find something and I did, but.... well, maybe it is one of those evenings to tell about it because a picture could not and did not do it any justice. I could post an older picture, but it just is not one of those nights either.  It is a new night!  Sometimes (and I love to reminisce) a person just aches to sit back and look back... but.... well, why don't I just tell you already?
The weather.  It is always about the weather!  Drizzly, off and on.  Too damp to caulk.  If I would have planned better, I could have ordered more window panes to replace the metal-framed clouded-glass panes - those I caulk from the inside.  My second choice was cleaning windows, but it might be double effort due to the caulking process.  TSP'ing the grout around the glass block - perfect for a damp evening and logical step in the total process.
I am always amazed at how fulfilling a step forward can be, no matter how small the step.  One triple window = one hour of work.  Worth it.  Just a tiptoe forward...
I still think of the lessons of the building:  Every day, during the day when I am not there, and especially when I am there working.  Sometimes it happens like this:  Each time I go to work at the building, I thank God for my gorilla-glued handled alley door.  I unlock the door (visualizing how it will look with tempered glass and painted and a kick plate on the bottom (is that the real name?  Not sure), being greeted by the building's warmth.... as if a breath.... The entryway is welcoming but a bit cluttered with debris from crumbling plaster.  Every day I hop through a trail.  Tonight?  I swept a clean path for myself.  I kept telling myself to focus upon the exterior work.  Leave anything inside for winter.... even a path so that every time I walk in, it looks tidy.  And every time I have a visitor, they walk in to this incredible space from an entry way which is truly as inviting as it can be right now.
Sweeping my own path clean...
Lesson two:  Not really a lesson at all, but an experience... an observation... a gift from the building...
Before I left I stood looking at the main level thinking again how perfect a size he is.  Not over-big.  No chance of being scrunched either.  Perfect.  And I remembered all those nights peering through the alley windows, checking on him, and dreaming of what it would be like to own the building, hoping God's path for me included the chance to own it, and imagining what we would become. Oh!  I loved the street lights shining through the windows!
It has been a month - actually five weeks - that I have owned the building. All this time I would stand in the main level, looking at those same street lights and their shadows.... feeling Blessed and crazy happy and excited and scared all at the same time as I could now turn 360 degrees to look at him.  But tonight, for the first time, I looked at my favorite spot among the windows..... and it was as if the building was saying "Come.  Come sit here.  Sit inside your dream."
It took me a few tries before I found the spot along those windows, sitting on the wide plank sills.  I thought it would be dazzling.  I thought it would be this euphoric heavenly foggy-lensed experience of vision.
Nope.  It was better.
I sat there among the fallen plaster which has been stained from corroded rebar.  A few spider webs too.  I had never sat there, inside the dream, in an intimacy with a building which has captured my heart and I have no clue why.  From that perch I looked back at where I had peered from the other side of the windows and where I had twirled inside, in happiness.  Now I sat in the streams of street lights cushioned with the building's own shadows.  Those pillars stood,  they stand.... sentinel-like, holding up what they were meant to, no matter what.  They stand.
From my spot.... it was the first time that I saw the building illuminated by the light.  Oh!  I just realized.... it was as if I became the audience.... and the building....
...Was on stage.
Just as it was meant to be.

Did I tell you I decided on a name?  The building is Matthias.  Saint Matthias, known as the Lucky One.  (It fits on the nameplate too.... A nameplate that has never ever had a name carved upon it.  God-willing, it will be Matthias...)

I thank God for this incredible journey..  May yours be Blessed with good fortune and love... Always love.
Thank you.
~stephanie