I Live in Clutter
I live in Clutter
I live on the fifth floor of a 36-room dorm with a front room overlooking Sutter St. From time to time I like to live life on the edge and sneak out onto my fire escape to smoke a cigarette. From the window you can see various restaurants and clubs which, without fail, always have someone stumbling out of them into the night. The most entertaining nights are Thursday through Sunday, where I can always watch woman stumble in high heeled pairs down the street at 2 am. While most of the time the conversations that float up to my room are entertaining, when incoherent yelling is going on at 3 am it gets a bit annoying. I share the tiny space with my roommate Morgan, whom at first glance you would assume fell out of some children’s fairytale. Her side of the room is a decorated with vintage music boxes of various sizes and shapes, books in various stages of decay, and an antique mirror. A delicate tablecloth covers her standard dorm room desk and various fabrics hang from the wall. Vintage prairie dresses hang from her clothes rack and dainty shoes litter the floor under her bed. Then there’s my side of the room. There’s enough boxes lying around that could serve some organizational purpose but they just sit there adding to the clutter. There are papers all over the floor, table, and desk. Most of them are probably important but I don’t really take the time to look, they mostly serve as hazard just waiting for me to slip on them. Schoolbooks are just cast around not being used but providing more hazard for me to fall over. Clothes litter my floor and sometimes I’m not sure which are dirty and which aren’t. It’s a miracle I can manage to keep this chaos to just my side of the room. Sometimes a stray towel or shoe will start to make it’s way over to Morgan’s side but I quickly kick it back to where it belongs. The only part of my room that gives any indication that I at least tried to decorate are the four art prints taped to my wall and the bright red metal flamingo clock standing proudly amongst the clutter on my desk. You would hope that all this clutter would stay within the confines of my desk space but no, of course the clutter continues to my side of the bathroom counter.
The bathroom is a horribly lit windowless pale yellow box. Complete with a dirty mirror that has a power socket right in the middle of the mirror, I’m still not entirely sure how that passed code. The vent in the ceiling has a collection of dust about an inch thick and the shower drain has so much hair in it I could probably make roughly three wigs. The shower is backwards and in order to get hot water you have to turn it to cold and vice versa. The water that pools under all of the counter inhabitants is really lovely to encounter when you’re trying to move things around and get ready in the morning. There’s nothing more invigorating than putting your hand in a puddle of cold water when you just want to brush your teeth.
The people that live in my building are interesting and as can be expected from any art student, eclectic. While some of them walk around in silver spandex booty shorts or ripped leather pants, some opt for the more edgy punk look with dirty denim vests and spiked shoulders. Judging people based on their clothing choices is a past time of mine. The clean shaven button up wearing boys who walk around with far more thought put into their outfits than most girls and the grungy bearded boys who definitely have bits of their art works stuck in their beards. There’s the girls who float around in vintage high waisted mom jeans thinking they know what it means to be hip with their cropped sweaters and grandma shoes and the girls who wear enough flannel to almost be considered part time lumberjacks.
The bathroom is a horribly lit windowless pale yellow box. Complete with a dirty mirror that has a power socket right in the middle of the mirror, I’m still not entirely sure how that passed code. The vent in the ceiling has a collection of dust about an inch thick and the shower drain has so much hair in it I could probably make roughly three wigs. The shower is backwards and in order to get hot water you have to turn it to cold and vice versa. The water that pools under all of the counter inhabitants is really lovely to encounter when you’re trying to move things around and get ready in the morning. There’s nothing more invigorating than putting your hand in a puddle of cold water when you just want to brush your teeth.
The people that live in my building are interesting and as can be expected from any art student, eclectic. While some of them walk around in silver spandex booty shorts or ripped leather pants, some opt for the more edgy punk look with dirty denim vests and spiked shoulders. Judging people based on their clothing choices is a past time of mine. The clean shaven button up wearing boys who walk around with far more thought put into their outfits than most girls and the grungy bearded boys who definitely have bits of their art works stuck in their beards. There’s the girls who float around in vintage high waisted mom jeans thinking they know what it means to be hip with their cropped sweaters and grandma shoes and the girls who wear enough flannel to almost be considered part time lumberjacks.