this one goes out to rikki

I love looking at rooms. Not just any rooms, mind you, but specifically the bedrooms of people who know me well enough to invite me into their corners of the world. You can never learn so much from a person as when you see their room. You get to learn what colors make them feel like home. You can scrutinize photographs from their past and inquire about the stories behind them. You can scan the spines of the books they cherish enough to put out on display. There is meaning behind every painting, every decoration, and even the very neatness of a room.

I sometimes think I like this pass-time almost as much as Amélie likes the feeling she gets when she inserts her hands into a sack of beans. I could spend hours going through photo albums and favorite books. I even like looking in closets if I'm allowed (or if I feel brave enough to peer inside).

One of my favorite rooms of all time belonged to Dave. He shared the room with his brother, Steve. They had these wooden bunk beds that were the same kind of make as the bunk beds my brothers used to share. Around each tier of their respective beds were pictures of musical artists that they cherished. I'm pretty sure Dave had one of Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell. The beautiful thing about Dave's bed was how it was his childhood juxtaposed his with his adulthood. Nick and Joni kept company with Dave's red blanket and twin mattress as if it were an ordinary and natural thing.

On the left side of his room, Dave had a nook of shelves stocked with records. He had everything from Blonde on Blonde to Miles of Aisles. We would play them back to back, and he would always let me pick when we would paint together his room. We would laugh, talk about music, and talk about god and how we could never stop thinking about the way we could never figure him out no matter how hard we tried. All of this passed on as inconsequential summer light penetrated through the window overlooking the driveway.

All of that is what makes Dave's room so wonderful to me. It was an expression of his boyhood and his love for music, and how he would forever be apart of the home he grew up in. I loved the way our laughter would hang in the walls, and I loved the sink in the corner that we would empty our paint water into. One time, the water left a design that we both looked upon in amazement. I believe that is the mark of Dave's room: beauty in simplicity.