| Hey you want a calendar? I'm serious! I've got two weekly desk calendars from Ewha University that I'm giving away. They're in English and Korean, with the Korean holidays noted. Pictures are of Confucian schools in the countryside. So, if you're interested - you know - drop me a line. |
You know how a house becomes familiar to you? So much so that other places you’ve lived seem distant, like you never lived there? This place, this apartment we live in, is like that to me now. I have adapted to all of its little quirks - like, that the kitchen water faucet pulls down to turn on - and I know the routes through the rooms even in darkness. It is our place and in it is all of our things that we have chosen where to place so that it pleases our sense of aesthetic. When we come back from a long trip it feels like home and I feel peaceful. Yet there are times when I look at a corner, or a space, and I think that I don’t know it. I think that I haven’t visited that little nook in a long time and it feels left out from the familiarity of every other place here. Such is the thought I had last night when I rolled over to turn out the lamp sitting on the table next to my side of the bed.
The bed only fits one way in the room; it is so big that it nearly bisects it except for one little walkway at the end. Standing from the door, the bed reaches out from the left almost all the way to the right. The alarm clock is perched on a nightstand on the side nearest to the door, and it is this side where Dave sleeps. To reach my side, I have to crawl over the bed or walk all the way around the peninsula. Usually, the Dave mountain range makes land crossing difficult and it is much easier to sail around the cape. I’m opposed to designated "sides" of the bed: It seems so…I don’t know…Leave It To Beaver-ish, too established. In Seattle, when we both answered to the alarm clock, I forced us to rotate sides like you would periodically flip a mattress. Wears better that way, me thinks; prevents ruts from developing. Only Dave answers to that horrible contraption now, and I refuse to hear it unnecessarily, so I sleep on the far side always.
Way on that other side, I’ve set up a little table (it came with the house), with a tea mat, a couple of candles, the Korean lamp Dave gave me for my birthday, and the little baby picture of me that my mother always kept next to her bed. There are also various reading materials strewn about: a book or two I’m attempting to read, perhaps a magazine I dragged in from the bathroom, or an article for edification. They all lie piled around the lamp, often obscuring the other effects.
So, last night I rolled over to turn out the light and spotted the two little candles sitting there collecting dust, and the picture too. I felt like I didn’t know that place, like I had neglected and abandoned it for other more accessible and gratifying corners of the house. I visit that place each day, at least twice: getting in and getting out. Yet, I don’t feel familiar with it. Truth be told: It feels cold to me and uninviting. I guess because of its distance from everything else. It is situated at the end of a long journey across the bed or around it; I hardly have reason to go there except when sleep calls (at night). I must have recognized this before, otherwise I wouldn’t have taken the time to make that space my own. Voila! It is like neglecting myself. Maybe now I’ll put a box of matches in there so it will be easier to pay attention to the candles and they can supplement the lamplight while I read each night before going to sleep.
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