A Room Of One's Own: Dispatch From My Room (As I Work From Home and Decided to Submit A Blog Entry)

A Room Of My Own (And Virginia's too!) © 2014

When I try to find beauty

At the beginning of September, the heat of Summer begins to dissipate in New York. But Summer leaves behind swabs of humidity, still clinging on as I impatiently wait for Autumn. To give context, I’ve been spending a lot of time alone. I’m an extrovert. So it’s an unusual feeling. I plan to spend September mostly alone, for my work is solitary, and it depends on me monetizing my solitude. I’ve lived in the same apartment for quite a long time, but lately, I have come to know my room. It’s probably because I spend more time in my room than I ever did before, and I will admit that is the prosaic reason. To quell my loneliness, I open my eyes, and light upon something beautiful. There are many rooms in one room. The room you wake up to in the morning, in the half-light, where the room is an exit from the dream you've just had, but can't quite remember. Or the room, as it appears when you first enter it, different from the room you sat in all day writing. For the room you share with another person, but you don't notice the room, or the opposite, where all you notice is the space filling up, but words cannot express how you feel. It’s loneliness. But you don’t say it that way because people cannot handle loneliness.

Media Art: "Red Marks"

If you look closely at the image I call "Red Marks" there is a human figure to be found. The story is I took this photograph in a normal manner circa 2003 or 2004. I don't remember exactly. I took it with Kodak color film and when I processed the film I stored away in my memory bank. It's basically an image of a man sitting in a chair in a sitting room (you can barely make out the wooden Venetian blinds behind his head). We had been sitting and chatting after dinner one night. I am purposely not revealing who the man is in the photograph for the sake of privacy — and also because my gut says it is more interesting to think of the image without any identifying markers, except a red mark.  Fast forward to 2010 — I scanned the original photograph and then used Photoshop to make the above image. Presto. Primo. What do you think? Leave a note in the comment box below.

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