many rooms, 5
February 2017
where night was what night should be
“My Father’s house has many rooms”
- John, 14:2
Cramped and literally full of nooks and crannies.
Not a clean floor plan for sure.
Instead a convoluted set of little additions subtractions protrusions cuts.
Were these apparently purposeless attachments to an otherwise simple shape planned? Or were they just the result of the need to fit a tiny alcove into a larger shape?
Who knows?
All I know is it was cramped and cheap there.
Not a smart place for sure.
Instead a grey carpet full of dirt and cigarette burns a dirty rugged ceiling with a naked incandescent lightbulb right in the middle where you should never place it a thin plywood door poorly painted shiny white tawny plastered walls cracked and punctured twisting and turning around the convoluted layout.
Not a smart place for sure.
And then furniture cramped and cheap too.
A worn-out leather chair a thick foam mattress with a rough orange cheesy fabric cover a makeshift shelf with a few books by Richard Neutra and Alvin Toffler an old drafting table full of cuts and blots of dry glue.
Little stuff worked magic softening the edges though.
A small night table with a tape recorder for music empty bottles topped with old wax and new candles a couple of cool punk band stickers glued over the thin poorly painted plywood doors of the built in closet a Metal Hammer foldout stuck on the walls with scotch tape a steel airplane seat ashtray stuck to the corner of the drafting table with dirty blue eraser putty a cork poster-board hanging next to the door full of photos postcards bar flyers and memories pinned down with red thumbtacks including a yellowing clipping from the Sunday literary supplement of El Espectador with an untitled poem by Medellín cartel hitman Ramón Ángel Correa:
“You know I love you a lot but life I don’t know why it’s so indifferent with me / I just wanted to be with you but upon arrival I just find that the loneliness of my life is so immense and lonely that there’s no way to say it /I don’t know if the sun will arrive before the penumbra/ I don’t even trust myself anymore/ Everything has let me down…”
Next to it written down with Koh-I-Noor rapidograph ink on equally yellowing drafting paper a complete transcription of Jim Morrison’s poem “As I look Back” making sense of this cramped and cheap room as the one in which night was what night should be.
Jorge Mejia Hernandez
