Rooms and Planets Where We Reside...
We all share compartments and spaces in real life and in our imaginations and memories: some of those memories based on visual images from false or fictitious sources; like films and dreams. Or they are derived from the recesses of our minds based on our created images and scenes from books and oral stories and the ever building imaging life of the current 21st century, such as the Internet and other electronic media.
In our collective and individual physical existence we have all had real rooms where we have spent many years of our life; there are fictitious places where we have dwelt as well. In the cyber age our brain is competed for more than ever. Some would advocate that we should spend more time in the real world. Real, actual places.
These places, when far enough in the distance, become strictly imaginary as well, which some call history.
I would like to ruminate on a few of both kinds, artistic and historical.
I grew up all of my youth in one house; at least the one I remember as a small toddler, till I left the house as an adult after about 17 years.
I lived in primarily three different bedrooms in that house in the university neighborhood of Indiana-Bloomington, as it is. The first bedroom, before house expansion and construction, I slept in from ages 2 until 9. The second room, was more or less from ages 10 to 16. It was part of the addition. The last was a room where my parents and then oldest sister had spent many years in the original side of the house, from ages 17-19. The window faced north, unlike the first two that saw the sun set in the west. Each one had its own charm, decorations, memories and feelings. Each of those sleeping areas had a different feel, or style. Its own culture.
Now a few decades later, living in the same house in the Virginia suburbs for the second longest period of time in my life, there are new rooms that have become habituated as their own places. I have occasionally slept in them but they have belonged to my offspring, the next generation of dreamers and thinkers.
I wish to describe a couple of these quarters. The two rooms are located on the southereastern side of the home; the house faces the sun to the east in these two bedrooms. And like some childhood fictitious planets that became part of my consciousness as a child, these two rooms are now a part of my images/mental pictures that I will compare to some planets of a fictitious galaxy in a time far, far away.
What used to be my youngest daughter's sleeping quarters and a guest room for visitors is now simply a play room. It makes up the corner of the house where we have been for close to six years. The other day it was cleaned and now looks very neat. I will compare it to the desert planet of Tatooine in the Star Wars movies of George Lucas. Clean and barren, respective of toys and other paraphernalia that might otherwise obstruct the surroundings, like toys and even former mattresses and sleeping aids. And now, (updated): a tread mill! All these accoutrements , make me think of a dry and clean planet, barren but full of surprises. There is a closet full of necessary things.
The room next to it is where the the two little boys of our household live. It has been more chaotic of late. Organically overflowing with toys, books, CDs, papers, clothes, more blankets and mattresses. Did I mention toys? This includes cards and figures rubber bands (the collectible colorful toy kind that have been popular among smaller children the last few years).
A lot of stuff, snaking and winding around. Some of it soiled, most of it unkempt.
Like the Dagobah System of Yoda.
Where Luke confront's the demons of his father.
The Dark Side. It looms and lurks in the recesses and corners of our little sleeping abodes, in the dark hours when the sun is obfuscated. We seek for the warm centers. And light.
Yet Yoda trained a young Luke Skywalker there in this dampened bug and creature infested planet and ultimately it was safe and warm and proper for his Jedi tutelage.
Thus are two rooms on one side of my house; a structure I have spent the second most time in after the home of my childhood at the end of the dead end by Bryan Park, Manor Road.
When was the last time I was there, physically inside my childhood home? That close but far away house of my past, the nostalgic one of my youthful dreams and recollections and experiences, family and friends and objects both real and fantastical? The early boyhood room where I wet the bed in my young years in the 1970s, to later become an adolescent in another space, and in the eighties became an adult, working and earning money as another Joe tax payer? 1989. I will go back to that Hoth planet someday. A place of snow and ice and grass to be cut, trash cans to be moved back and forth, in all extremes under the sun. What was there? What has becomes of those places? Where will they be in my mind in future galactic wars in other warm climes of the soul?
Tatooine suns and vast sand landscapes of Jawas and Tusken Raiders?
Check.
Dagobah pools of dark earthy waters and overgrown jungle roots, full of snakes and other threats of vermin?
Check.
Hoth snow fields and mounds of vertiginous ice hiding Bantha monsters in their caves?
Check.
They all have become part of the divisions of my mind, memories of things fabulous and surreal, dreams of visions always and never lived.
These are our rooms and planets where we make our home.
Blog it, EMC.
