Monday, June 2, 2008

Measured by Bathrooms

I remember times in my life by the bathrooms I have been in. I worked for an elderly woman who lived in a mansion built in 1815. Her bathroom had a floor to ceiling stained glass window of blues and aqua greens, with designs of peacocks that rose over an antique clawfoot tub. This bathroom signifies a good time in my life. Then there was the abandoned apartment building in the French Quarter of New Orleans;the bathroom there was simply a room, filled with broken pieces of drywall and shattered glass. This "bathroom" signified a very frightening time in my life. The bathroom where my Tequila drunk cousin and I shaved our heads on a hot August night, the hospital bathroom where I cut myself shaving with a cheap single blade razor, giving myself a scar that will never go away. The green metal cylinders with the grate in the ground that smelled of old piss on a hot day, Stockholm's version of the public bathroom. Perhaps it is strange, but these rooms are like little thumbnails in my mind, classifying each period in my life, whether I was well off or homeless, safe or in danger. The mind is funny like that, storing something ignominious and disregarding other, prabably more important things like... wait a minute, where in the hell did I put my keys?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like this one best.

It is introspectve and offers a look at life abit not a way often thought of.

Erin Barney said...

true, but that's how I operate, in ways that most people don't. Makes things more interesting, really.