anatomy of a space 3

A table and chairs with books looking on.

This is a space that I've grown to love over the last twenty months or so. I don't eat here all that very much. Eating alone -- which is what I do everyday -- seems somehow more palatable on the couch. When J's in town, we do, in fact, dine here together, but it seems like it's been a year since he's visited (hint, hint).

Like much of my tiny studio, this space is more accident than intention. My mom found these super modern chairs at a fancy summer sale in Michigan. They're sleek and leather, two attributes I'd never guess would define my decor. But they did, in fact, define my need for a suitably modern table. This knockoff is Ikea. J's parents have the real deal -- the genuine article -- in their house in California, which somehow seems a far more appropriate home. J and I received a beautiful, old, and perfectly me, cherry table as a wedding gift from dear friends in Michigan. It's the table that we'll gather around in Kentucky and it's the table that feels more like home. This one, though, I won't forget, even if it does find another home for itself in Philadelphia.

Mostly I use the table for sewing or grading papers or storing piles and piles of mail. This morning I used it to wind a skein of -- beat on my happy heart -- indigo cashmere. And later today I'll use it to grade the six papers that I've sworn to myself I'll read before yoga at 4 pm. During some weeks, like this one, I use it to support a vase of fresh blooms. I think these tulips might be the best thing that's happened to me in February.


The bookcase was an ex-boyfriend's street find in North Carolina. He painted it brick red and it sat in our ranch's living room in graduate school. I got it in the breakup and I painted it yellow before I left for Philadelphia. Today it holds the books that I need most immediately, the ones I'm teaching from this semester.


Next up: the interiors of my kitchen cabinets? my overstuffed closet? my windowed shower? We'll see.