Space

I have always been caught up in the various aspects of space. It seems that space is a dominant force in my life that I'm just now trying to control.

There is the physical and the emotional facets of space.

Physical. The other day I was looking around my dorm room when I thought about the physicality of space. The idea of dorms in general instantly bring forth a mental image of an old, weathered billboard I drive by on my trips to Houston. The billboard was yellow at some point in time, but now is chipped and faded, advertising apartments with the slogan "Live like people, not like bees!"

There's also a statement my grandmother told me once when we were playing a game of pool on a miniature Playskool set up when I was a kid. I don't think it was meant to be deep by any means, it was a sweet and simple passerby thought, and yet it pops into my mind every so often (you know those funny little things that just stick to you?). I believe I asked her something along the lines of how to clean carpeted staircases (why? I have no idea) which led to the subject of houses in general, whereupon she said, "Well. You're born into a family with a big house, then you're on your own and move to a little house. Eventually you have your own family, and move into a nice big house until your children move away, and then you move into a little house again."

At the time, I simply shrugged and proceeded with our Playskool pool game, but now it ties into my idea of space and the way it dominates our lives. In a sense, phases of our lives are measured by the four walls that surround us. My Nonnie's big house/little house proclamation led me to realize this.

But what to fill up this physical space? Nice, foreign furniture to obsess over like Fight Club's unnamed narrator?

This leads me to aspect of space number two: The Emotional.

I have to say, with much excitement, I'm about to move into an apartment with Mowski that exceeds the cubicle-esque space that now surrounds us. Every time we talk about the apartment, I've realized there always seems to be a common factor: people.

Let's have the drawings and paintings of friends and family fill our walls, let's create a place where people will want to feel comfortable and relaxed.

Chuck Palahniuk gets it. The narrator is practically nothing with his furniture, but becomes everything when Tyler Durden comes into play. Where there's people, the emotional space is filled. For a long time now, I have felt like The Narrator (or the beautiful Edward Norton, if we're going by movie) Pre-Tyler, merely cleaning unused furniture all day. I'm in the little house phase of my life, but why can't I make the emotional space big?

This is merely a resolution, and I have no intention of starting a Fight Club myself, but from now on I plan on filling any and every aspect of space possible.

Besides, who needs a couch when there's no one there to sit next to you on it?