The Comfort of Home

 The space a person resides in can be a perfect representation of the safe place within their mind. Every empty room is a blank canvas. One must merely be confident in their personalities, and embrace both their complexities, and their simplifies alike. It is not just reflected in the items that surround them, but the locations, and conditions in which they are kept.

The living room is spacious for the small apartment, with a small sectional couch facing the mounted TV. The couch has clean, but unfolded laundry all across it. The small coffee table has a stack of notebooks to one side. Directly below the TV is a shallow mantle piece. A small stuffed rabbit sits next to a stack of DVD's, balanced carefully as to not fall. The stack is small, consisting of Zatoichi, Yojimbo, Throne of Blood, and a specially acquired live action DVD of Rurouni Kenshin. Under a hand made painting of a koi was a stack of lesser used DVDs, consisting of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Da Vinci Code, and Lord of the Rings.

A large tapestry takes up the wall next to that one. The print is of a simple silhouette of a man standing against the red setting sun. The man wears large sleeves, and a katana on his hip.

The wall opposite that is taken up with a set of framed images of Japanese style artwork, in their traditional styles. The frames are staggered in between the thermostat and the carbon monoxide alarm.

Under those posters is a shoved-in office space. An entertainment table with a small CRT TV on it also holds a Nintendo 64, and a Game Cube, both with the cords wrapped up neatly when not in use. Next to that entertainment table is a desk, sitting under a breakfast bar. On top of the breakfast bar is a laptop and a monitor with Chrome sitting open. The tabs consist of YouTube, playing some sort of lo-fi mix that's hours and hours long, the Wikipedia page for the Edo Period, scrolled down to a timeline of events, and a walk through for the game Nioh.

A slender keyboard sits on the desk, which is otherwise neat and clean. A PlayStation controller sits on top of a volume of manga in the corner. The chair is short, and scarred with cat claw marks along the top. The desk has to be pushed in, just to walk around the couch. The living room is what most people would consider large enough for the two designated spaces.

The breakfast bar is cleaned off for the sake of a cat bed, where a tortoiseshell cat sleeps for the time being. Best not wake her up. She gets awfully cranky if you do.

Beyond the bar is the kitchen, cluttered, but by no means dirty. A single serving rice maker sits next to an electric kettle. The sink is clean save for a single mug with no handle.

The bedroom seems to be like a hoard of posters; all cheaply printed and stapled directly into the wall. Maps from games, or books sat with cheap prints of game characters. The bed is piled with quilts, and a coffee table serves as the side table. A few empty water cups litter the table. Also on the bed are several soft plushies, easy to roll over and hug. Assuming, of course, there's no cat sleeping on it.

Everyone has a home, safe and buried. I am lucky enough that my living space can represent it so very accurately. A bit of sanctuary from the long and hard days, that all blur together and have so little meaning. Everyone has ways to escape it. The mundane struggles of life must somehow be coped with, and to temporarily to into another world is to temporarily find peace. For the struggles are so far away and distant that you shall never feel their pain.

To glorify something is to live something without the pain, and the struggle that is required. It is so easy to close my eyes and pretend that I am someone else. That I am from an era that has been dead for too long. I can pretend that honor and chivalry still exist, and pretend that it's still as simple as working hard and doing your best.

For I do not have to live through the wars. I do not have my fields laid to waste. I do not send my loved ones to a war that has no meaning. I will never feel these pains, and I will never know their biting effect. A safe place, made out of a bloodied history.

So many died, and so many more mourned. And now, when I look back at those historical times, I find solace, for reasons I cannot explain. I like to believe that this solace can help them find peace. They did not die for nothing. No matter the side they were on, they died with their best intentions in mind. And now, we live in this world because of that sacrifice.

What an honorable way to die. What an honorable way to live. It seems so simple from here. Like I can just reach out and take what I want in that world. As though I should have been something great. Maybe, long lifetimes ago, I was.

Or maybe I'm just escaping a world that I could never agree with, no matter what time I was born in, or what part of the world. Maybe I'm just homesick for a place that does not exist, and find broken comfort in silly obsessions.

But to live alone is to live without judgment. And when I close my eyes, I can almost smell the cherry blossoms that seem too familiar to my soul. When I leave, I will face this modern world with my head held high and my chin held stiffly. Because at the end of the day, I can always go home. Where the reality is a distant past that can cause no farther harm.