February 5, 2009

• Tell-tale Home

  Whenever I step foot into someone's office or into someone's home for the first time I begin to formulate who they are as a person. We present ourselves in various ways in person and otherwise, but what we display in the places we spend copious amounts of time is always revelatory (is that a word? I didn't just make that up did I?) I've spent the last three days sleeping on the couch of a friend of mine to avoid driving back and forth between New Jersey and Delaware for work for the next week, and while she's been away at work I've been learning a little about her. I know that just makes it sound like I've been rifling through her underwear drawer, but truthfully all I really have to do is walk around and look at the things she's chosen to use to represent herself.

  There is, for instance, a large stuffed orange M&M sitting on her love seat, and the dusty keyboard sitting prominently in one corner of her living room with the desk chair on wheels. On one wall there is a framed poster of van Gogh's Starry Night (a poster I had in college, and which is now probably lost somewhere in a box among my Buffy the Vampire Slayer posters and Harry Potter calendars). On another, a painting boasting a beach framed by coconut trees. A black lacquered Jamaican shaped clock ticks away in a far corner, and on an end table are miniature Eiffel towers, bells and plush toys with the names of a variety of countries and cities. Her refrigerator door is littered with pictures of people I've never met, and pictures of herself dancing and smiling. Her bookshelf sits in a corner, and books like Austen's Pride and Prejudice and The Art of Mingling share space with massive photo books and frames. I didn't go into her master bedroom, but I imagine some of the most telling things are in there, the things she probably overlooks because she sees them every day, touches them and thinks nothing about what they mean. They're all part of her story.

  A part of me always wondered why people stared so when they came into my apartment, why my magazines seemed so interesting and why anyone cared to see what my kitchen looked like. I wonder what they thought while looking at some of the books on my shelves, Anansi Boys, Epic of Gilgamesh, The Ramayana, Beowulf, Alice in Wonderland, Lord Deverill's Heir ( a rousing and entertaining romance novel involving a man named Lord Deverill...and his heir). My immediate family members were on my walls, and under my coffee table was a very large stack of Elle, Essence and Lucky magazines. Bits and pieces of me.

  • 2:03 pm
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