Hi there. I'm not going to bother making excuses for the unannounced Spring/Summer hiatus. Thank you for waiting! I've missed you!
Here's a short descriptive essay that I wrote in the Spring, about my old bedroom.
My eyes open from yet another crucial, rejuvinating afternoon nap. I channel my inner four year old and rub them with loose fists until the sleep is gone. My right arm made its way under the pillow again, this one sheathed in a goldenrod case of a slightly higher thread count. I prop myself up against the pillow and look around at my surroundings, this sad collection of belongings I call my most personal space. It’s late afternoon, and the sun is barely visible from through my single woven wooden shade. This peice made it’s way over from my previous place on Gilman Street, an attic apartment with long hallways, sloped ceilings and a thick layer of dust. I should be outside, enjoying the beautiful day, but sometimes I can’t resist a short snooze with my cat, Baby. I am the center of her universe, and she’s great at snuggling.
The closet door is closed for once; the carmel wood visible, free from its usual carpet of discarded clothing. Paint on the intricate tin ceiling is peeling, and although I’ve never found any chunks of paint on the floorl, exposed spots of black suggest otherwise. In one corner is my dresser, a small vintage piece bursting with clothes, its tired little legs barely able to support the weight. Situated like a faux-vanity is a polished piece of metal standing in for a mirror, propped on top and leaning against the wall. The reflection isn’t clear, so I never use it. I just like the shape, and it seems like an appropriate place to hold the tiny love letters my boyfriend attaches to the flowers he’s been so kind to have delivered to my door.
All of the surfaces and corners of the room are completely cluttered. On a small knee-high book shelf lives an ivory jewelry box, that girls my age likely coveted when we were young. It could stand in for a castle in a My-Little-Pony scenario, for those of us who prefered ponies to Barbies. I thrifted this one, though, and the music box in the bottom drawer stopped working long before it became a part of my life. On either side are random piles of papers; things I know I need to keep but have yet to find an appropriate place for. On floor under the bottom shelf is a black horizontal metal mailbox, shaped like a giant 3D letter, that I picked up at the hardware store a number of years ago, back when my friends and I had many zipcodes between us and we took the time to actually communicate in writing. Some of them I haven’t exchanged more than a Facebook “Like” with in years, but inside that box is evidence of a time when we took the time to consider what were the most important parts to share and seal in an envelope. We’d pay 35 cents to have someone carry it miles and miles. The functionality of the US Postal Service continues to blow my mind.
I am quite pleased with some of my art, however. There is triptych of sorts, three images in black frames on the wall opposite the door. It may not actually be a triptych, but there aren’t very many times that word comes up unless you’re discussing art history. The center image is of me. I’m leaning in a doorway, my back to the camera. I was 18, an art student at a school two miles from the North Shore of Massachusetts. The image was from a study another student in my building was doing, a color study. I was wearing dark denim Levi’s and a white tank top, which matched the door frame and connecting walls. My dyed-red curly hair blends in with the shadowy doorway. I can’t remember whose apartment that was, or why I was there. But the student who took it had the same name as me, her and her boyfriend were from Texas. He was going to Emerson, in the city, and they both left after the fall semester because he proposed and they wanted to plan their wedding.
The image to the left is a blind, one-line drawing a 3rd grade art student made at a summer program a dear friend of mine was teaching. It’s simple, and not terribly meaningful, but its small insignificant story makes me smile. On the opposite side is an image I picked up at a religiously owned thrift store. It’s a long exposure of a dark-haired woman wearing a striped shirt, leaning over a concrete balcony. She is faded, like a ghost, facing the camera and leaning forward into the balcony. It reminds me of Roman Holiday for some reason, although the woman isn’t pocket sized like Audrey Hepburn.
These images hang over a radiator that comes up to my waist. In the winter, I drape my towels over it so they’re warm when I step out of the shower and dry fast for re-use. Five feet away is a small, salvaged side table/plant stand, which I painted black. It came as a matching pair that I found outside of a mansion in a free pile on my way home, back when I lived on Park St. I used spray paint out on the back porch, and apparently the wind blew some on the next building over- my landlord made a huge deal of it when I moved out, but she never liked me anyway.
Next to my bed, between the end of the bed, which consists of a second-hand mattress and box spring that sits on the floor, is an end table, repurposed as a night table. There are about five empty or half-empty glasses and mugs. I try to remember which water is was most recently poured, so I can quickly quench my thirst before getting up to consummate my day.
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