19. Beggarstaff Brothers on another wall.

< >

I was thinking about the place I lived before this one. The apartment on the same street I first lived on when I was a toddler, three-quarters of a mile northwards.

When I moved out of that old place, it felt under duress. I had ended a relationship of five years, I had wanted to live there on my own. So many things prevented me from doing that, and so that last day, while I was waiting for Janet the ornery landlady to come by and inspect my cleaning work, I took a few photos.

I felt like sharing, because at times that apartment made me very happy, even though ultimately I am very glad I am in a new place with a new context surrounding me.

Isn't that always the way?

view from standing near the front door to the apartment, looking from dining room to living room. I loved that archway very much.

The last remnants of a life - cleaning supplies, nearly-dead plant filtched from work, computer hooked up so I could keep up on freelance stuff until the phone line went live at the new place. This is looking from the living room through the arch into the dining room.

The very top of the arch. The fixtures I believe are original to the building, and would likely fetch a pretty penny from antique dealers and restoration freaks. Some of the wood was warped and pulled away from the walls because the building was not level at all, but from a short distance, you couldn't even tell.

There were cabinet shelves at the bottom legs of the archway, and I used them to put all my children's literature and my mapbooks. That's me in the reflection, sitting on the floor and taking a picture. That hardwood flooring was throughout the three bedroom, except in the kitchen, where it was covered over by checkered black and white lino that had definitely seen better days.

I thought about some feelings I had for this place, and how to describe them, but it's so easy to take the maudlin route when writing about decisions and moving and changing things up in a grasping hope for better days. So I'll just leave you the pictures for now. In your mind you can fill in cushions and stacks of books and Persian-style rugs and lots of clutter and a baskets of blankets and too many remote controls and a table full of papers and junk. Sunshine would just fall into the place in huge splashfuls, through tree branches and window shades. At night, sometimes the only illumination would be a few strings of white string lights, some candles, the overhead lamp from the kitchen streaming through the door in a very solid domestically yellow sort of way.

Home is very important to me.

< >