My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

So, I haven’t written in a really long time…

First, we’re now running WordPress 3.9, then 3.9.1. The updates are totally automated after 3.8, so it won’t be me who destroys the blog with an update gone stupid. As for WordPress 3.9, I really love it, everything keeps getting more polished, sophisticated, yet easier to use. I just have to practice the use part.

Next up…

I moved. My purple/red/black gothy sanctuary is no more, and I really do miss it. A lot. Being here feels like that time I was in the hospital for two months. I had familiar stuff from home, my girlfriend was there, but it obviously wasn’t home. Here feels like that, just clearly less extreme. I mean, I’m not hooked up to forty-seven machines, I’m not scared of dying at the drop of a hat, but still… Everything’s totally white (and painting isn’t allowed), it’s smaller, it’s not a “master suite,” so there are lots of doors in/out, no attached bath. My other room felt separate, like my own little apartment.

Technology-wise, it’s pretty fabulous. A fellow came in, hung my tv on the wall, my iMac from the ceiling, my surround sound, around.  It’s not a bad house, a bad room, it’s just..

Okay, pictures before I elaborate.

I wide view…

Crazy shelved closet door…

Art…

Charmer, transplanted…

As you can see, it’s very different. I mourn the old room because, it was a symbol of independence. It was a symbol of what I could accomplish with words and sheer will. Originally, that room was a really hideous pale yellow, with anime art on the walls that I collected when I was twenty-four and astonishingly lonely.

Three years later, I was madly in love with a girl, Sara. We were apart after being there a year, after I died but didn’t, after I got the little plastic tube in my throat, after I quit talking forever, after all that, we were apart. Back then, the only thing I was truly scared of wasn’t dying, wasn’t not talking, it was being apart from Sara, which is exactly what happened. So, after I recovered my strength and my wits, winning Sara back was everything. I knew I could, I knew that so long as we lived in the same city, I could remind her why we got lost in each other’s eyes, why we danced. I got crazy face piercings, more tattoos. I flew to New York with my life-saving breathing machine powered by a boat battery. I road in a boat on Saranac Lake. I had my picture taken at the very top of the Olympic ski jump in Lake Placid.  I wanted to show my Sara everything we could be doing together, that all the bad changes were nothing but temporary. While on my journeys through upstate New York, I met the head of a production company who worked with Ira Glass on the tv version of his radio documentary show, This American Life. They ended up doing an episode about me, Sara, independence. Even so, I hadn’t totally convinced Sara that I was the right bet, but the night we had dinner with Ira and the TAL crew, she gave me the last bit of inspiration needed to sway her. She said to me, “Look, I just don’t think I can be with someone who’s twenty-seven with anime all over the walls of his room.” I didn’t have to capture a unicorn, slay a dragon (I’d have done both if necessary), I just had to redo my room, something I always meant to do, but never really tried. That weekend I ditched the anime, went out with my assistant and bought art I genuinely loved. By week’s end I picked out paint, hired a painter. I created a space that was beautiful, that reflected the me in my head. I did it without my family’s help, or approval. It was me, a crazy act of independence, building a path toward the life I wanted with someone I loved. Sara and I would end up waking up together many mornings in that room, so close, so in love. Then she left, for good, for Boston, someplace I couldn’t follow.

Still, I’d spend almost ten years in that room. I’d find love again, I’d lose it, and find it again, and lose it, again. Though, we’ll save all that for some other post, maybe for post one-thousand-and-one.

For now, I just want this feeling to pass, this just wanting to go home.