Intersections: A letter from a writing room in Detroit

By Liana Aghajanian

May 25, 2016 6:28 PM PT

I’ve been in Detroit for a little more than three months, and life has finally started to settle down. There are so many things no one ever tells you about owning a home, one of them being the infinite amount of silence that exists within its walls, if you let it.

I’ve converted a section of my place to a “writing” room, something I’ve never had before. It is small and compact with stark white walls and a window to the outside world where I watch the trees sway back and forth, and the teenage Bengali boys across the street fix cars.

In a very typical Armenian fashion, there’s also a rug on the floor, a rug I love so much I don’t want to share it with anyone, except the floor of my writing room.

I’ve retreated to my compact room to write, but also because it feels finite, like a deadline for a story. I now have more space than I know what to do with. The other day, when my neighbors asked if they could garden in my backyard, I somehow ended up letting them. They grow food — green beans on a trellis, squash on the roof, tomatoes in the pathway — and so I figured they might need the space or make better use of it than me.

For the first time last week, I cooked a meal whose aroma replicated the one only found in my mother’s kitchen. The scent filled the entire house, maybe even went out the window, contrasting with the mouth-watering smell of curry that seems to permanently permeate my neighborhood. I also went to the main branch of the Detroit Public Library, one of the most beautiful I have seen in the United States.

I’m reading a lot about Detroit, what it was, what it is and what it will be. This place draws so much opinion, both from people who live here and those who have never been, and in an effort to objectively learn and not add to the noise, I’m trying to absorb the weight of this place through words.

I’m also reading a lot about Los Angeles and Glendale — about more fatal hit-and run-crashes, about an Assembly race that seems to be heating up, about horse owners in the San Fernando Valley and a bullet train, about the exciting new Expo Line that has opened.

I’m attempting to understand what my place is here, in the city that put the world on wheels. This isn’t an easy task, given all that Detroit has been through. Though they share the same affinity and necessity for cars, this is not Los Angeles, not a place where you can or should get lost in your own individualism.

This place needs people whose vision of something better doesn’t just include themselves. Three months have passed, and so has the initial anxiety about moving somewhere new, about buying furniture and filling the fridge.

I am trying to figure out how I fit in here, what I can bring to a place that needs a lot of love and care. I’m optimistic the time will come when I figure it out. For now, I’m in my writing room, toes buried in my rug, taking a minute to appreciate the fact that I get to watch the trees sway back and forth as they please from up here.

LIANA AGHAJANIAN is a Los Angeles-based journalist whose work has appeared in L.A. Weekly, Paste magazine, New America Media, Eurasianet and The Atlantic. She may be reached at liana.agh@gmail.com.