G is nesting. My third floor roommate since last Thursday when the previous tenant moved out to shack up with his girlfriend in Brooklyn. Whereas my former roommate lived sparely, at 24 not quite old enough to have amassed the number of possessions that weigh down and encumber so many of us just a few years old, G's stuff trails out from the door of his room and snakes its way around the perimeter of the hallway that separates our individual living spaces.
I have lived in this house for three years now. Despite popular custom, I have declined opportunities to "upgrade" to the second floor bedroom that has its own bathroom, preferring to remain settled in my own quiet corner of the house in the room that is actually two rooms, consisting of a modestly-sized bedroom and a separate space about half the size that I have painted a shade of green called "tea" and decorated with old battered furniture, most of it cast-aways from former roommates. Some people strive to live lives unfettered by the accumulation of random possessions should they suddenly feel compelled to up and move to Bali or some other exotic location. Or at the very least they live as such simply to maintain the ability to do so, even if pragmatism would ultimately prevent them from committing such a daring feat of relocation. I am not one of those people.
I take comfort in my innate ability to grow roots. I bristle at the idea of perpetual motion. When I arrive in a location that I like, be it a neighborhood bar on a Friday night, a city to live in, or even the sofa in our den on a wintry Sunday afternoon, I set up shop and do not move. Some people save their money and dream of spending it on roaming the globe in search of transcendence on foreign beaches. I save mine and dream of the sofa I will buy when I can finally afford a one-bedroom apartment of my very own in a neighborhood I adore. Not because I am so shallow or materialistic that I base my happiness on the accumulation of possessions, but because my happiness is based on my ability to create my own sacred spaces.
I am a nester. I accumulate things. Old magazines, antique jewelry, art, books, porcelain boxes, quilts made from hand by my mother. In surrounding myself with objects of varying degrees of beauty and meaning, I feel more anchored and settled. More content in my skin and with the choices I have made. At times I wonder what would happen if I were faced with a cataclysmic life event such as a fire or a robbery and all of my possession were snatched out from underneath me. Would it compromise my sense of security and self? Or would being liberated from hundreds of pounds of literature and fine art provide some sort of catharsis I am currently preventing myself from experiencing? It's a situation I hope to never encounter.
Until G moved in last week I had never met a male nester before. Most of my male friends and past boyfriends have displayed a marked indifference to their domestic possessions. One in particular was so adverse to the possibility of being hampered by his possessions that he made a point of discarding all of his furniture every time he moved, even if it was within the range of only several zip codes.
I remember vividly the sense of hurt and betrayal my mother articulated when she separated from my father. Not because the marriage was ending but because he expressed no desire to equally split up their shared possessions. To my mother the antique highboy in the foyer of their Noe Valley condo was a symbol of years of domestic solidarity. 20+ years of shared history, raising a child, weathering various personal crisis's. He saw it differently and exited the marriage keeping only a framed water color painted by an old family friend some 30 years earlier. Where my mother collected antiques, old quilts, the occasional sterling tea service and decorated her homes to look as if there were inhabited by old money bohemians, my father's first apartment as a single man was modeled in a purely reactionary vein. Brand new Japanese furniture sets, a Miro lithograph, vases containing a single orchid on the occasional black lacquered surface. An articulation of independence or a fresh new start.
With G's arrival in our house the topography of our shared floor has gradually changed with the addition of new objects in public spaces. Early Saturday morning I stumbled into our shared bathroom for a glass of water to find my feet cushioned by bathmats where before I had only encountered a hard, cold surface. The window ledge, formally host to my sprawling collection of high-end lip glosses, mascaras, makeup brushes and hair products is now cluttered with a dozen or so new toiletries of the male variety.
Disorganized by nature and indifferent to its potential cures, I have long expressed my presence on the third floor through my sprawl. My possessions are never confined to my own room. I long ago claimed the hallway that divides my space from that of my roommates as my own personal domain. If any of them have really minded none have expressed any indication to that effect. But a new force has been introduced and it is reigning me in.
I certainly don't mind performing a little reshuffling in order to make a new roommate feel at home. I'm adaptable by nature and I empathize with his desire to carve out his own space. I am even impressed with the bravado with which he has done so. On his second day in the house he brought home a can of paint and proceeded to color his walls a masculine yet chic shade of olive-khaki. Painting is frowned upon by our landlord, a fact that some of us clearly disregard. Nesters create their own spaces at the expense of the rules. We'd rather suffer future consequences than be forced to live within walls scuffed by years of neglect or lack of imagination.
Yet just as one adjusts to the preferences of a new love, living with a new roommate presents its own set of required compromises. The hallway closet that I annexed as my own several months ago when it became clear that my old roommate had no use for it had to be sacrificed to make room for G's impressive collection of business-appropriate attire. Its former contents now sit in piles in the hallway awaiting reassignment into storage devices that do not yet exist. I fear that a major purging may be lurking around the next corner.
Sometimes people find the initiative within themselves to enact changes to their surrounding or to their lives as a whole. Other changes are imposed by external forces. The arrival of a new roommate is an example of the later. But sometimes the introduction of a new life force is exactly in order for shaking up the status quo and moving yourself forward. However tiny and incremental the steps.
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