sacred spaces

in the museum of memory

My dear friend Celine is preparing to leave the city, and she decided to celebrate her time here by hosting a small party, one where we could chat and commiserate over the loss of her leaving. We sat around the room in small, overlapping circles, chatting. The hardwood echoed our voices, making the small crowd feel twice as big. The heat of us gathered until our brows shone slightly, the glow of congregation. I wish I had taken a picture or three dozen, something to make the moment last a bit longer. I couldn’t bring myself to take out my phone, to interrupt the world in front of me. Instead, I began to ponder the specialness of it all, of being in my friend’s sacred space.

You can know someone for months, intimately enough to recognize their handwriting, how they push their hair behind their ear, how they pause between thoughts in their speech. You can grow familiar with their verbal tics and writing style; yet, you may not know what their home looks like. What does it look like when they’re not alive in front of you? What furniture do they drape their tired limbs over? What is the nature of the light that covers their faces as they get ready to sleep each night?

That night, Celine’s room was at once the venue for gathering people who would miss her and a museum of a life in San Francisco. It was unlike any room I had seen but seemed perfectly right for her. In the refracted light of the beautiful designer lamps, I observed her workspace and her books, the tatami mat and futon where she slept, how the cool San Francisco air whispered into the room. Even with various friends covering most of the surface area, everything still radiated with her energy. I understood her better, knowing that these surroundings were where so many of her observations and thoughts may have taken roots. This room — this was part of her as well.

What would it be like to inhabit a room like this, with a table to sit on the floor and read, a beautiful bookshelf? Would I turn into a person that reads more, who can sit on the floor for more than twenty minutes at a time? I imagine staring out her windows into the streets of the Mission District and suddenly becoming as prolific as her. Or do I have it backwards — does the home get shaped to the nature of the inhabitant, a leather shoe molding to the foot of the wearer? 

The reality, as always, is somewhere in the middle. A home is a bit of an archaeological site, rich with artifacts that imply a life, imply a person. The artifacts mold the person as they are molded themselves, and they continue to exist even as the person leaves them behind. But how much of the significance could an outside eye ever uncover? Could I know the significance of one book or a pen, maybe given by someone else who left the city? 

There’s my own home in San Francisco, in its unique type of perfection. I hear the birds chirping from 6AM to 5PM some days, even as my room barely gets any natural light. There’s the resplendent beauty of the bay windows, filtering in light and the perfect view of the enormous flowering tree that is often visited by hungry hummingbirds. The quiet street stays quiet, except for the Tuesday morning garbage trucks, and a calmness lingers throughout the whole neighborhood.

The living room tells the story of a very different life from Celine’s. Yes, we have a bookshelf filled with a variety of wonderful tomes. But more prominently, you’ll see the pair of TVs that take up the majority of a room, ready to play every football or basketball game playing on a given day. Below the TVs sit several sets of adjustable dumbbells, which pair with the weight bench that’s dragged from behind the TVs multiple times a day. 

Life here is that of four men who watch sports together every day, sometimes while lifting weights. We cheer both what we watch on the screen and for each other’s sets; we commiserate about our fantasy football teams and favorite artists and our purposes in life. There’s screams of joy and rage in equal measure, as there should be. Perhaps this is the exhibit in the museum about healthy male friendship, or a display on declining attention spans in the 21st century.

My room reflects my private life: slightly overfilled with furniture, excessive collections of CDs and books and notebooks and clothes and loose papers. I wish to have everything close to me, even if I’ll never get to most of these books, even if I’ll never be able to fill all of these pages. Would someone looking at this room imagine the life that I have? Maybe it looks like a more glamorous life of culture and consumption than it really is, where I spend countless hours at my desk during work or laying in bed on my phone.

In this way, a home captures the aspirations of a person. In an ideal world, the inhabitant would listen to CDs and read books when in his room. In an ideal world, he would be using his desk to scribble away in different notebooks and playing with his film cameras and everything creative. Instead, he only looks at them occasionally, when reflecting on how his collections arose. The digital camera was purchased on a little trip to the Salvation Army with Priscilla, the poetry books were gifts from Jess, the desk was a hand-me-down from Rob, when he moved out of this room.

Just like museum exhibits, homes are often transient. At the end of the run, the things are packed away, and maybe some are distributed, given new meaning in another exhibit. But they’re still meaningful and still tell a story. So on my bedside sit two books with stylish covers that Celine was giving away, imbued with a memory that will always follow them — of a friendship and of a wonderful party.

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💧 Drops of the Week 💧

• SINGLE - “echoes” by AIR APPARENT - new AIR APPARENT single !

• POEM - “A Little Tooth” by Thomas Lux - You did, you loved, your feet / are sore.