Dumb Thoughts

A few years ago when I was starry eyed and naive I read this book by fellow Czech Milan Kundera. It featured a character who felt that her identity was defined by the things that she surrounded herself with -- her pet cat, certain photographs, books, clothes, records that she accrued painstakingly -- all were deliberate clues about her inner life. Her sister's approach to her domestic trappings were completely different: she believed that the external was irrelevant and her essence was completely divorced from her physical belongings or surroundings.

I read this book approximately six years ago -- just when I first moved to New York. I found myself for the first time free to adorn my living space exactly how I wanted, without fear of reprimand from parents or school officials. An yet . . . . I kept thinking of the first sister. How her belongings seemed so important, how they were her way of figuring out who she was and where she fit in the world. I felt a bit superior to this notion that material objects could define me, that my identity was defined by an accumulation of THINGS, which, taken as a whole, would somehow communicate my essential being. I fully appropriated the second sister's philosophy: I looked down my nose at my friends who seemed so concerned with buying just the right albums, the right clothes, the right pictures or posters to plaster their rooms with. I felt like it was a weak, simplistic, fumbling attempt to create a ready-made personality. "I'm the kind of girl who listens to Sixties mod, reads Martin Amis, brushes my teeth with Tom's of Maine." It was lazy conformity.

For the first three years that I lived in New York, I made it a point to keep my walls bare and make sure books and cd's were not prominently displayed. I hated the idea that someone could just walk into my room and feel they got a sense of who I was merely by glancing at the trash I kept around.

It sounds pretentious and dumb. It was. After a time, the design aesthetic of my living space was not so much rooted in philosophical conviction as in laziness. I never bothered to frame or hang the lovely Frank Lloyd Wright wrapping paper my mother got me as a gift. I had no pictures of family or friends, no artwork, no band posters, nothing. My walls were completely blank, and they were ugly.

The one thing I saw fit to adorn my otherwise virginal wallspace with was a calendar. I've always had one handy. It's strange, but I'm obsessive about calendars. I feel that without some tangible way of marking time, I am completely out of touch. I feel lost, confused, totally out of touch.

These days, my walls don't fare much better than they did a few years back. But I've come to the conclusion that what I surround myself with isn't necessarily for show. It's not for others to judge me by. It's for me. I'm the one who spends the most time here, and it makes sense to have things that I like close by, whether it's aesthetic or practical. I have three decorative wall decals above my bed that add a splash of color to my white-walled room. My bookshelf functions not only as a place for my books but as a display case for odds and ends that I've acquired over the years -- my grandma's highschool graduation picture, a tin-can insect my mother gave me, a starfish my friend brought me from Florida, a plastic narwhal from an ex-boyfriend. Still, the calendar is central. It occupies a sacred space on my north-facing wall, all by itself, nothing else detracting from it. It's always been chosen carefully and has, in many ways, reflected my internal life at any given time. Last year, I chose one that featured Japanese woodcuts, hoping it would lend me calm and serenity with it's peaceful strokes of blue and pomegranate. The year before that it was a kitschy Dick and Jane calendar, whimsical and nostalgic and childish. And the year before that, it was Madeleine, the little French schoolgirl with the yellow hat. After the year is done, I take down each calendar and put it in a box for safe keeping. I don't know why. I'm fairly unsentimental about most things, and not at all a pack rat. But these I save. I guess it seems like otherwise I'd be throwing away the past.

I suffered through the first two months of 2008 with no calendar whatever. I know it sounds silly but I felt totally disoriented without someplace to keep track of the days gone by. A place to ink in appointments or parties or birthdays. A way visualize the passing of time.

Finally today I purchased a silly calendar of retro-looking ladies saying cheeky things. I hung it on my north-facing wall, all by itself. I can see it from my bed as I fall asleep, assured of my temporal weight. Comforted by the knowledge that there's a tomorrow.