jetsetgreen

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Going back into the closet

I talked on the phone last night in my closet.  I haven't done that since who knows when.  It was a mixture of reasons; part my dad down the hall, part sensitivity of information and part I'd never sat in that closet before.  It was kind of nice actually.  There was a nice big box to sit on from where I could survey the contents of that particular closet.  I have a lot of sweatshirts.  All organized by color.  It felt almost like I had found the secret compartment of the house like a secret wardrobe minus the fur coats and the Narnia.  So I stayed in the closet for a while for a mixture of reasons; part the mysterious nature of it all, part being comfortable already, part loving the feeling of being cozy, and part realizing that the opportunity to just sit in a closet doesn't come along that often.  I feel like the last time I spent a significant amount of time in a closet I was at my elementary friend Jenna's house up to no good.  For some reason we decided (and it was probably me doing all the deciding) that we should get crayons and markers and leave our mark.  So we stayed in her closet for quite a while making beautiful cave-like sketches of water buffalo and wolves on the hunt - when it was actually our names and some stupid flowers and hearts.  It felt so liberating to be able to draw directly on the wall, something that would never fly at my house and probably not at Jenna's - but I didn't stick around to find out.  

I never got to do anything creative to my room.  If I wanted to put something up on the wall it had to be put up with plasti-tack or it wasn't going up.  Painting our rooms anything other than white was unacceptable.  So throughout the years I came up with some genius redesigns for my walls that always got vetoed; the giant Chinese dragon taking up one wall that I was going to paint, the floor to ceiling picture wallpaper of the beach to go with my sand colored carpet, having someone tag my name with spray paint on one huge wall, bright blue paint, etc.  As you can tell I went through some very distinct design phases.  And because none were ever approved the most action my walls saw was a poster of Blur (my favorite band throughout high school), a poster of a flamenco dancer with my name on it from Spain and a poster my brother gave me with a cat with messy fur that read, "bad hair day".  To this day I fear being able to decorate my own home.  I don't know if I'll be able to pull together an entire dwelling.  If not, I know that at least I'll feel at home in the closet. 

3 comments:

Marge Bjork said...

When I was four I tried to convince my family that we should paint our house black, but that didn't fly. My mom painted everything white as well.

tara said...

I wish my closet here was big enough to sit in. Stupid tract homes...

kiki said...

When I was younger, my favorite place to hang out, provided it was clean, was my closet. I would grab pillows, blankets, books, and a flashlight, and I would spend hours in there.