March 27, 2006
Gosh. The literary qualities of this photo are endless. This was my apartment in Muncie, Indiana (home of the Ball State University Cardinals and Jim Davis, creater of Garfield) and probably one of my more boring days. I was twenty-three years old. But even out of relative mediocrity you can find the minutiae of beautifully flawed human character.
I mean check it out - this is a girl that's looking off into the near-distance (my computer screen but you don't know that, it could be anything. An art magazine, an ant farm, the cover of an old VHS tape she's thinking about watching but not sure she can take the emotion and awkwardness of a long-ago horse show) and there is a window that seems to lack a curtain and so there hangs instead a blue-and-white throw rug designed with the logo of her high school alma mater.
Inexplicably, Christmas lights. Why? Because. Freshly post-University, one can use that as an excuse.
A hodge-podge of pictures hang on otherwise relatively bare walls. This is a transient space, a place to lay your head but not to call home. Stuffed animals on the bed mark the passage of a childhood that she doesn't want to let go quite yet. The hand-me-down quality of her bedding, the frayed look of her white hoodie, and her pale skin: she's working hard, not getting out much, saving a lot of money to go somewhere. To do something.
Above the window, like the North Star, or a religious totem, is a yellow smiley face on English A4 notebook paper. This is from her significant other, her better half, who she's known for about seven years on the day this picture was taken. Love is obsession is the plan of the spark of life.
And so, in the way of all the great literary stories, her journey begins.
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