Photographs of a Parking Garage - May 3, 2020

May 3

I hadn’t planned on a post for today, but as I pulled into the parking garage—I caught the tail end of On Being on NPR.

Host Krista Tippett was interviewing writer Ocean Vuong and was reading a snippet of his 2014 essay: “The Weight of Our Living: On Hope, Fire Escapes, and Visible Desperation.”

“—and yet only the fire escape, a clinging extremity, inanimate and often rusting, spoke—in its hardened, exiled silence, with the most visible human honesty: We are capable of disaster. And we are scared.”

I don’t have a fire escape out here in the suburbs (nor did I have one when I lived in the city), but I do have a parking garage. When I need a change of scenery—a different place to write, work, or reflect—I go there. It may not seem like the most practical place with its absence of any amenities that one might find in a normal workspace, but it is comforting. Pandemic or not, this particular structure is one of a more ambitious vision and has never been particularly well utilized above the first two floors.

From floor 7 (6 when it’s raining), you can see lights flicker above vast fields of unoccupied asphalt and shimmer on mad-made ponds below. On the horizon: yellow and white headlights follow the interstate while red bulbs blink atop radio towers. The roadways emit monotonous hums, aircraft overhead sing at volumes dictated by altitude, and all around: the mechanical requirements of the various nearby structures engage and rattle.

This is a place that meant a lot to me awhile back, probably means ever more now. Despite the industrial appearance and rocky texture, it’s a retreat of solitude, reflection, creativity, and it can be shared—an ideal spot to sip coffee over conversation when pressed into service as a social outpost.

I listened to the full On Being conversation later and read Vuong’s essay. Consuming the full content, the context was far different than I had originally gleaned from the end of the broadcast. After reading, I thought that perhaps the only thing my parking garage and the fire escapes in Vuong’s words had in common was their “zig-zag” nature, the criss-cross construction that allows one to ascend and descend both structures. Still, there were some things that rang true, notions and words I could identify with even if that wasn’t the original intent.

I had gone to the garage today simply to get some work done and change up my surroundings. With the last few minutes of a public radio show, I came to develop a deeper appreciation for my sterile refuge and was eventually lead to reading something powerful.

Even if I can’t adorn a fire escape with a comfortable chair or potted plants just steps away from my dwelling, I’ll gladly take the nearby suburban parking garage and the view it offers at the end of screeching tires and a circular, upward route.

Because ultimately, it’s a place where I feel I can live.