I have been meaning to clean my room for days now, and every night that I come home from school, I tell myself I'll do it, and every morning it's more clothes and letters and clusters of pocket contents. It doesn't seem like a disaster until I really stop to look, and then I realize how unsatisfied I am with my materialism -- especially after things like Born Into Brothels. I just have things -- old tea canisters, Beatles figurines, my sister's canvases (her beautiful, beautiful nudes), LPs (soon to be coming out my ears), shoes, pens, stacks of laundry.

I am a packrat in the truest sense. Any piece of junk or garbage that catches my eye gets added to the arrangement. I think, in a sense, it's kind of natural; humans are always collecting things and saying to themselves, "I wonder what this thing will look like when I put it next to this thing," and for someone so visually oriented, it's fitting that I have lots of things next to other things. Posters, stacks of books, old Jones soda bottles.

I am almost ashamed when I bring people home who haven't yet witnessed my bedroom, and I see them surveying the stacks and neatly arranged collections of trinkets. I would rather be someone with a futon for a bed, an overflowing bookshelf, and bare walls. I admire people who are able to live without disturbing their surroundings, but I think I've always been one to leave evidence of my existence. I am always decorating and arranging things, pinning poems and magazine articles and notes that Carolyn has written me to the cork board in my cubicle (remember?). I like spaces to feel lived in.

There is something so empty about a clean room -- or at least about mine. At a certain time, it's satisfying -- to wake up and put my bare feet on the cold, wood floors and feel the space in the room. Maybe that's it -- not emptiness, but space.

Of course, here I am pontificating when I could spend time actually cleaning... Wouldn't you rather hear about it, though? If my digital camera weren't STILL BROKEN (my impatience is escalating), I'd take some pictures of my slobishness, if only to prove that I'm not the gross, fruit-fly sort of messy. You understand, right?