Three weeks ago, I moved yet again in New Haven, this being my 4th house in this town. And this time, I am almost located back where I started - downtown! Why I am shifting will constitute an altogether new post, but here I want to talk about my current state of mind, anticipations and expectations from the new place!
I finally decided upon a room here given the amount of detachment it offered me from my roommate, the budget and the amount of freedom it gave me to project myself on it. My new room is a small one, brightly lit by two large windows with white, translucent curtains. The room is bright and white painted - everything in the room is white, like an untouched white canvas. It smells of some weird medicine, which I think will be overcome-able! The apartment has another bedroom occupied by another girl. The only common space is the kitchen & a large bathroom which will be shared by both.
Before I go on to explaining the situation at present, I must briefly describe my experience of house hunting! I adopted 3 modes of references:
1. Asking friends to see if they or their friends needed roommates!
2. Asking friends if they were looking for someone to occupy a vacant room
3. Craigslist and other internet groups
The three channels above took me to various kinds of people, various kinds of places. There were so many factors in the head while selecting a house. While the physical condition of the room is one aspect, the other important criteria was to find a decent roommate. There were expectations that one could move with a culturally similar person, from South Asia. I had an added boundary of my 'vegetarianism'. But I allowed to let that go pretty easily. The other aspects to choose were the distance of the place from my school, the budget (ofcourse) and the area in which it was located, given the notoriety of New Haven with relation to crimes. Being in the north east, everyone goes through pain of finding about added utilities of heating and electricity - whether the house is gas heated, or electric heated! This is the most important concern given the extreme winters that long till March.
However, most of the times, I was able to decide whether to move in a place or not by its smell! I have realized how important smell is for a place to be adapted to. For me, the room had to smell acceptable. The ideal would be a neutral air, but I witnessed all kinds of smells - rooms with Chinese spice aromas, to food stuff rotting since days, to refrigerators leaking out smells of overloaded meat, to smell of dampness and darkness, airconditioning, of deoderents, and so on. The only way I used to test was to ask myself whether the new room would be able to take my smell - or in other words, if I would be able to change the smell of the space as I move in.
I finally decided upon a room here given the amount of detachment it offered me from my roommate, the budget and the amount of freedom it gave me to project myself on it. My new room is a small one, brightly lit by two large windows with white, translucent curtains. The room is bright and white painted - everything in the room is white, like an untouched white canvas. It smells of some weird medicine, which I think will be overcome-able! The apartment has another bedroom occupied by another girl. The only common space is the kitchen & a large bathroom which will be shared by both.
And so this new place gave me an opportunity to think about ways of domesticating it. Trying out moving scarce furniture from one corner to the other, I have finally rested upon a layout. Other things got worked out interestingly - I got a foldable sofa bed from someone who was selling it for cheap and it perfectly suited the small nature of my room. So I now have enough floor space for myself since I can fold the bed into a sofa! Further, I got a small lamp (given that there was no light in the room) - and I luckily found one as simple as a white cylinder! I played with its position for a week and I have realized how important it is to avoid movement to switch off lights just when you are about to sleep. That one moment when you get up between finally pulling over your blanket and switching of the light can ruin the sublime experience of transitioning from your conscious to your unconscious moment.
Similarly, it is so important to have your alarm in close vicinity to you in the morning - such that your reverse transition from sleep to awake is smoother. Since I use my mobile as my alarm clock, I also need to have a charging point closer. And since most of the times, the last thing I work on is my laptop, I prefer to have all its assemblage (the charger, mouse, hard drive, etc) to lay as it is around - where everything can be disconnected merely by one single plug! With all these factors in mind, I think I needed to just pull up an extension board with control for all electrical devices at one place! (I also realize how electricity now puts us to, and wakes us up from our sleep)!
Keeping the room like a white canvas is as compelling as the desire to fill up with one's idiosyncrasies. Sometimes I wish I had the money to build my own kind of furniture according to my collection such that this could truly represent me! But it is here that I realize how architects can be so imposing - in a way that we never get into people's archives to structure furniture according to what they would like to have on the walls, shelfs or show cases. Interior design is always about making a space that can be published in a design magazine or architecture blog! But there is joy in keeping one's room "messy" - only in comparison to what the architects would call "clean". But the messy tells much more about life than the clean. Rather, messy is life, and clean is just sterile.
Similarly, it is so important to have your alarm in close vicinity to you in the morning - such that your reverse transition from sleep to awake is smoother. Since I use my mobile as my alarm clock, I also need to have a charging point closer. And since most of the times, the last thing I work on is my laptop, I prefer to have all its assemblage (the charger, mouse, hard drive, etc) to lay as it is around - where everything can be disconnected merely by one single plug! With all these factors in mind, I think I needed to just pull up an extension board with control for all electrical devices at one place! (I also realize how electricity now puts us to, and wakes us up from our sleep)!
Keeping the room like a white canvas is as compelling as the desire to fill up with one's idiosyncrasies. Sometimes I wish I had the money to build my own kind of furniture according to my collection such that this could truly represent me! But it is here that I realize how architects can be so imposing - in a way that we never get into people's archives to structure furniture according to what they would like to have on the walls, shelfs or show cases. Interior design is always about making a space that can be published in a design magazine or architecture blog! But there is joy in keeping one's room "messy" - only in comparison to what the architects would call "clean". But the messy tells much more about life than the clean. Rather, messy is life, and clean is just sterile.
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