There are Ghosts in My Room...

Plinky asks about my favorite room...

My entire house, every other room, is decorated in "Contemporary Eclectic Asian" and I'm not shy about doing some pretty over-the-top stuff throughout. There's certainly no question an artist lives here. But my study? Ah, yes... my study.

Stepping into my study is like stepping into another world in another time. It is a very small room and two of the walls are lined with bookcases. But it is not the books that make it my favorite room, much as I do love the company of a good book.

The pieces of furniture in this room, old and eclectic in their own right, are the keepers of my memories. There's what was my mother's favorite overstuffed easy chair. The antique brass torchiere lamp that belonged to my grandmother on my mother's side. An unusual end table that my mother's father refinished. An extremely old chiffrobe that my grandfather on my father's side made for my grandmother decades before I was born, beautiful in its disrepair. My father's cherished trophy that he won in the 60s after bowling a very respectable 279. An antique vase that belonged to my father's mother, the glass fogging with age. My treasured wood secretary that worked its way from my grandmother, to my aunt, to my mother, to me.

When someone else enters this room I feel uneasy, as though a very private conversation has been interrupted by an outsider. No one living is welcome here. My study is my room of ghosts. It holds the shadows of my past, where I can be with them all once again, feel them again, smell them again.

It is my room. My room.