Pretty Lynne Writes

I’ve been thinking about places. I’ve been thinking about how places hold memories of sense and feeling. 

There was a big old maple tree behind my childhood home, part of an abandoned farm. The ghost of a barn lay crumbling there, along with the rusty skeleton of an old VW bug. I was afraid to try to get into the car; all of the neighbourhood kids had been warned by our parents that we could get hurt. But I climbed that tree, and sat in its branches and read my Nancy Drew books. I can even now recall the way the light fell on my spot there, the branch under me, the way I could see into the kitchen at my house, my mother at the sink. 

I’ve been thinking about places, and how they hold power. 

There is a small dirt parking lot off a country road, surrounded by tall, straight pine trees planted in even rows,  where I wept and sobbed and wailed for hours in my car, because I knew I couldn’t go home until I got some of it out. I cried until I was hoarse, until the windows were fogged. Every time I drive by that parking lot, I feel that day in my stomach, the pressure that had no safe place to go until it was released into the cold plastic interior of my Volkswagen. 

I’ve been thinking about places, and how they hold pleasure. 

In my first rental place as a student, my tiny bedroom faced west and late every afternoon, the sun streamed through the window and lit up my bed. It became my favourite refuge, having a nap in that bright, golden light, and waking in time to get ready to go out dancing.  I had long, sweaty make-out sessions in that sunlight with a guy we only ever addressed by his nickname. He kissed me with abandon because it didn’t mean anything at all. I read my assigned novels lying in that light, and savoured the work of Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Laurence. 

I’ve been thinking about places, and how they hold lessons. 

A boy I liked had a bedroom with dark brown shag carpet and a low futon bed. For some reason I don’t remember what the walls were like. It was there one night that I discovered I couldn’t trust everyone to be safe. I came to when a roommate knocked on the door and asked what was going on. I vomited on the awful carpet, and woke up alone in the room. With sunlight piercing my blurry vision and headache, I called a friend to calm me. I was later presented with a bill for $40 to clean the carpet. I paid it and was never alone with that man again. 

I’ve been thinking about how I found myself in places, the way they formed my idea of myself. 

I always went to a special study carrel on the 12th floor. It was that laminate wood grain with high sides for focus and privacy. I could smell the books in the stacks nearby, but I wasn’t there to find books. I placed my Discman on the top shelf, and played The Postal Service or Iron and Wine, while I wrote papers on rhetoric or literary theory. I went there to work because home was a place where people needed things from me, needed me to do things for them, needed my attention. Here in these stacks, by this thin slice of window, I could think my own thoughts. Breathe. Daydream. 

I’ve been thinking about places, and how time shifts in them. 

There is the dingy beige bathroom next to the elevator at the hospital I visited so many times. After a long, anxious drive, I needed to use the bathroom. Washing my hands in the cracked sink, I looked at myself in the mirror and took a big deep breath. I needed to calm my body before I got onto the elevator and changed roles, from scared child to adult child who will take charge, and figure out What To Do Next. 

I’ve been thinking about places, and how they hold peace. 

In the home I bought for myself, there is a sunroom painted a buttery yellow. In the winter, the room is heated by a small gas fireplace; in the summer, the room looks out into the shade from the big tree that stretches over a small pond. In the mornings, I sit and drink coffee and listen to music before I have to get ready for work. I pull a soft blanket over my legs and pat my dog’s head. 

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about places, lately. How you can choose the kinds of places you want, and leave others behind.