Absent Containers

Since we moved in, nearly 7 months ago now, the empty lot across the street (usually populated by corrugated steel shipping containers, ancient tractors and heaps of scrap metal) has sat absolutely untouched. Static. No one went in, came out, nor minded its perimeter. The objects within (those visible above the fence, at least) never moved. And in general, up until Saturday morning, the yard appeared to be abandoned.

It was the sound of what I thought must have been a car accident (seemingly worse than any I had witnessed living on one of the most accident-prone corners in Baltimore) that first alerted me to the work commencing within the lot's confines. Deafening even to my ears, through the drone of falling shower water, the crash was loud and brief, sounding distinctly of collapsing metal. As I learned after shutting off the water, and still soapy, bouncing like a Fraggle towards the window, the noise had been a symptom of one of the containers falling the height of another to the gravel below, freed by a handful of men working the plot.

The noise continued from that point forward, ending at a reasonable mid-afternoon. When they were done, 4 shipping containers, and 2 tractor-trailers stuffed with rusting wire and plate-steel had been removed, presumably driven to another lot with similar specs, permanently altering our portion of the Bushwick skyline. We've speculated that the owners of the adjacent yard might have been prepping it for sale, or perhaps that a period of work that I had been unaware of had just ended, but ultimately we knew little. Not that we needed to, the lot had little practical impact on our lives in the days prior.

I'll admit to feeling relieved though. This small shift in my visual environment has left our view less cluttered, a few pounds lighter. It feels as though with all that debris, they trucked away a heaviness that burdened the block, and now, looking through our wide and dirty glass, I feel the levity as well.