A Room of Our Own

The room was empty now. I had been a guest there for quite a few days. More like a month. More than a single room, it had been like a suite or a small apartment. It had been almost like home, except it wasn't. None of my friends or family had been given the address, although nobody writes letters any more, so just say I didn't have an address where junk mail and bills could be delivered. It was still like home. There was a reason for that, but it might be hard to understand.

None of that mattered, because I was no longer there. My time there had been predetermined by others, regarding both my arrival and my departure, and it was now over. I had known that and accepted it. I wanted to be there.

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If I were the type who keeps a journal, I probably would have written something like the above in the pages, and maybe a lot more. However, I am not that type and am more given to trying to get good photographs with my phone while living in the moment. I live many moments very intensely, which I hope makes up for not keeping a journal that few people would ever want to read.

The days passed very quickly. I had not known how they would behave, but they flew by, forcing me to live a year in just a month. That can happen, you know.

Now I have left that room and have left the city where it is located. I know I can never return. The trouble is that the room with its corners and light has not left me and the streets of the city are still walking through my memory. I have gone, but the empty room is still there. More than that: it is unlikely that it will disappear any time soon. I need to do something about that. Something I cannot yet define or describe.

I may need to keep a journal after all.

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Days (or weeks, or years, later):

There is an empty room inside me, and that creates a real dilemma. If there is something inside me, I must not be empty, right? I mean, I can point to something that''s inside my head and my heart, so I am not empty, not hollow. That sounds good, because so many people feel like they have nothing inside their inner walls.

Not so fast, I say. What happens if what is inside me, or inside anybody for that matter, is also empty? Can nothingness be said to fill a void inside someone? Is emptiness something after all? This is not funny, not funny at all. 

Maybe if I start again, write it all down carefully, then I'll understand what's what and what's actually nothing, nothing more than a big hole. Now the journal I should have kept but didn't is haunting me, accusing me of not taking the time to write it all down. All I can do is to try, with all the hindsight possible, to recover what was there. I will try to ask myself a few things.

First of all, why is this room inside me? Why is it not in the place it occupies, on a certain street in a certain city?

Second, why is it empty? It is perfect for somebody to occupy. It should not have been left alone, abandoned.

Third, why did I once inhabit this room but then walk away? Should I have fought to stay there, fought to keep it?

Fourth, what did I do while I was there that has made it follow me? After all, just spending time somewhere, sleeping there, is no big deal. People do that all the time.

Fifth... you get the idea. Now for some answers.

First, the room is inside me because I felt like we had a very close relationship. It was pretty much it and me against the world. Well, not against the world because there were no battles being waged, but we spent a whole lot of time alone together. I don't know about the room, but I certainly did a lot of thinking while I was there. I absorbed it, from the old wooden beams to the new shower, like a sponge. I was it and it was me.

I would look at the rough stone walls and think. Really think, like only only can when looking at walls like that. They were not plaster or plywood or anything artificial. They were real walls and they were old, probably more than two centuries old. That was enough to give them the wisdom to look back.

Then I would sit at the table with my laptop. We - the walls, the laptop, and I - would spend hours overlooking the street below, listening to the people calling out while walking by. While we were all looking we thought about those people and their lives, ones we would never get to know yet who were almost sharing our space. The room allowed me to get close to so many without giving me away. It was almost like being a voyeur, but not quite. 

I could shower there and leave the bathroom door open, which meant I could almost see the ocean while the hot, strong water flowed over my shoulders in waves. I mean, at times it felt as it I were bathing in the waves that lapped against the wharf. You don't get a feeling like that very often. Nobody could see me in the shower, of course, and nobody could hear the water running, but I could still close my eyes and feel the Atlantic Ocean streaming past. It didn't feel quite like an ocean in its protected harbor, but I knew its true identity was there, just a little further out.

I didn't prepare any food there in that space where I was a guest, other than to snack on a few things while standing at a counter facing said ocean, sometimes drinking a double-sized cup of coffee with lots of milk. In the morning, untill eleven, delivery trucks were allowed to use the narrow street to drop off orders to the businesses along it, so rumbling and braking were the music that I drank along with the coffee. Nobody knew I was doing that except the room. It was our happy little secret.

The room and I used to watch television at certain times, mostly just to see the local news and catch the weather. The rest of the programs were of little to no interest. We had better things to do, believe me. That's why neither of us was very interested in any programs. It was preferable to retire to the double bed with the extra fluffy comforter and no windows that was located in the back area. We felt a bit claustrophobic at times, but it wasn't really that bad. The bed was comfortable, the closets were big and there were enough shelves. Plus, if the door to the bedroom had been left ajar, the streetlight kind of shone down the hall from the balcony window. That was sufficient to combat the claustrophobia.

There were nice little niches and some shelves for books as well. There were three spots I liked for reading, plus the nice work table. The room, or rooms where I was living as a fuest, definitely felt like a home in miniature. I had gone there to work and had gotten everything done that I'd been hoping to do. It felt really good and I have to give the room credit for that. It took good care of me. I was close to everything, including to a grocery store, a pharmacy, and cafés. Everything I needed was nearby and it was safe to go out at any hour.

We were such a good fit that at a certain point I begain to consider making the space a permanent residence. I hadn't brought everything I needed for that, so I realized I would need to send for a few things, or purchase some. Since it was not a house or even a full-sized apartment, but more like a guest suite, I knew it would be necessary to limit what I brought in, to stick to a more or less minimalist life style. That wouldn't be a problem.

The problem, however, was that there was no real way to take up permanent residence there. When you are a guest, you are a guest. I wasn't renting nor paying a nightly fee, and there was never the option to purchase the place. Eventually, I knew, I would be forced to give up my status as guest and move out.

When I left, I decided I would leave behind a couple of books and my business card, in case I ever were called back. Also, I wanted the place to remember me. 

That hasn't happened yet, I haven't been called back, but one never knows. Anyway, like I said at the beginning, the room has taken up residence inside me. It is empty of me, but I am filled with it. However odd that might sound, this arrangement might work out even better. 

First of all, I can continue the same types of activities as when I was a guest and was so happy to stay in the guest space. I might have to use my imagination to reconstruct the ocean straight across from the shower or the noise of the deliveries one floor below, but that isn't so hard. 

Also, I haven't talked about the actual work I was engaged in while there, but it's work I can do in other places. There's a grocery store and a pharmacy in the town where I live, of course, and there's even an ocean a few minutes away - not visible from the shower, but close enough. They might help me rebuild.

The city and all the people going to events like poetry readings, book presentations, plays, concerts, art exhibits, lectures... that is the biggest challenge. My imagination will really need to work hard to create those conditions, but there's always the internet, Zoom, and WhatsApp to help me feel like I'm still there. 

There were none of those things inside my place of residence, of course. They were all outside, in different locations, so really what I need to do is to set myself up again inside the four walls. I will open the door and walk in, put a few things in the small refrigerator, and make myself at home, just inhabiting the space that inhabits me.