Dispatch from the Box: The Second Morning

So I survived my first night in the box. I couldn’t tell whether someone was playing a joke on me or not when, around 8 AM, I was awoken by someone squeegeeing my bedroom window clean. (First squeegeer: “Dude, there’s someone sleeping in there.” Second squeegeer: “I know, but we’ve gotta clean the windows anyway.”) Aside from that, and being woken a few times in the night by knocks on the window and loud footsteps, I slept pretty well. The glare of the bright street lights seeping in through my curtain and the noises of drunk passers-by walking down the street somehow felt familiar, I think because the head of my bed in my old, blue house in Ann Arbor was about two feet from the sidewalk and I was once used to hearing college-happenings of every kind at all hours of the night.

I was planning on writing an update sooner - at the end of the day yesterday - but much to my dismay, our wireless internet wasn’t working in the box, and still isn’t this morning. So I am sitting down the street at Cafe Ishi, drinking coffee and trying to make sense of the crazy conglomerate of events that comprised yesterday.

It was a pretty great day in the box. Nearly everyone I know in Spartanburg stopped by to say hello, deliver gifts, or help us with a project, and I was glad to see so many new faces – people young and old who I hadn’t met before coming into downtown just to check it out. The Herald-Journal came by again to take photos and chat with us for another article (thank you, Sean, for all of the publicity you’ve given us) which you can read here. Even FoxNews stopped by, so I guess we’ll be on TV in the morning.

We’ve had quite a few people drop items/notes in our beautiful drop-box, made this morning by Arielle:

Highlights include:

I’ve also gotten a couple of email dropbox notes and am still accepting more, just email your notes and pictures to rachel@hub-bub.com. I’ve also been getting blog comments from quite a few people who have warmly welcomed me to the neighborhood, and some blog comments from people as far away as Kansas!

. . . “Bet ye did not think your story would make it to Derby, Kansas!?! I was born, raised and educated in Spartanburg. I get back there ever 2 or so years. I keep up with the newspaper and all the Hub City books. Wish I was there” . . .

Amazing.

At 12:30 PM, Arielle and I began our first performance/activity, spending just over an hour working on our version of an exquisite corpse. We did a trial run on the blank postcards that Kris Neely is using as part of his local project, Artist in Transit, and later took one of our breaks to walk to one of the downtown mailboxes to pop it in the mail. Stop by to get one of these postcards to decorate yourself. Lots of friends came by cheer us on while we worked, and Alix came over to take some photos and video, which I am hoping to put up on the blog after I get the video camera cord today. Until then I only have a photo of the last one we made - the man with nine makeovers - which Arielle and I were both pleased with:

After that I had a delicious sandwich, Derya came by to knit with us and hang out (I MISS YOU BUTTHEAD! COME OVER!) I did some reading, made a few phone calls to friends, and actually took a nap. Without the shades drawn. Which was a little weird. I was woken up a few times by passers-by who wanted to know what we were doing, and though I was a little groggy was more than happy to answer their questions.

In an awesome thru-the-window interaction, we had our first paper-up-to-the-window-communication when Katherine came by to see what kind of ice cream we wanted from Brusters (It was SO DELICIOUS! THANK YOU!)

Later, we escaped from the box for our allotted dinner break,which was a quick but tasty meal at Lime Leaf. I CANNOT GET ENOUGH STEAMED TOFU, even though Alix told me that too much soy product can make your thyroid swell up, which is slightly distressing to me.

In our true “Make Don’t Think” tradition, Arielle and I then spent about 2 and a half hours making our diagram of how things fit together in our collective minds – images provided by a slew of late-eighties and early-nineties National Geographics. We weren’t planning on spending quite that long on the task, but it was actually so much fun that we got a little carried away.

The diagram started at DisneyWorld and ended somewhere around Hillary Clinton. I think my favorite was connecting Alex Trebek to a mustachioed Japanese woman and to robots. We somehow figured out how to connect everything from Wes Anderson to bagels to jetskis. We had a lot of help from people who stopped by to visit. It was pretty great.

I’ve been keeping the window blog going:

(I’m glad they won, even though I didn’t get to see it.)

I wouldn’t say that Arielle and I are getting stir-crazy just yet, but it has been a little silly in here – we’ve been laughing a lot – because frankly, this whole situation is a little silly. And I don’t think we’re quite used to these close quarters . . .

Arielle: I’m going to blog about how I keep farting. And how bad it smells.
Rachel: I want to blog about that.
Arielle: No! They’re my farts, so I get to blog about them.
Rachel: Hey. I have to smell them.

The night ended with Arielle and I sitting out on the stoop, sharing a beer and watching passers-by stroll down Main Street. It felt comfortable and familiar, much like something I would have done back home in Ann Arbor. Wednesday turned into Thursday while we conversed with a pair of red-headed twins in a Christian hardcore band who happened to be walking by the window on the way to their car. We got into some heated discussion about religion, learned a little about them and their family history, and after I left I realized that they were the first young people who had stop by to chat with us all day. You can read in more detail about our conversation here, #13 on Arielle’s list of the day’s bests. College kids: I’ve seen you walk by. Are you too cool to check out what’s going on?

So, in summary, a working list of the pros & cons of living in downtown Spartanburg:

Pros:
friendly neighbors
easy access to mailboxes
dedicated law enforcement officials (thanks for making me feel safe, bicycle patrol!)
delicious Thai food
nearby coffee

Cons:
college kids who are “too-cool-for-school” (or only cool enough to go drink Coors at Wild Wings)
the fact that Spartanburg’s downtown wireless network doesn’t actually work
Arielle’s flatulence

Because so many people have been stopping by, I’ve been pretty busy and pretty distracted. I’ve realized that I probably won’t get any work done in the box that isn’t related to the box. It’s not quite the version of “Art Jail,” as we call it, that I had anticipated, but exciting nonetheless.

Derya, I left my contact solution on my bathroom sink, can you grab it?

Oh, also . . . my phone charger finally decided to go kaput. So, friends and family, if you need to reach me you can send me an email and I’ll call you back as soon as I get it. I’ll get a new charger soon.

And, does any want to do this with me? Superhero 5k