Just Being Honest

It's been a few months since the Opium Den came down, and my feelings about it not being there vary. Sometimes I almost feel apathy ("Whatever - my life is far away anyway"), sometimes I feel the sting of its absence along with some rationalization ("Sure it sucks, but it was really time and we're inarguably better off without it"), sometimes I feel unadulterated regret ("fuck."). Right now, at this moment, I'm about to take an advanced engineering class final exam, I have reports and papers due, and work-related stuff is a pain.

And I am so fucking pissed that it's gone.

The Opium Den Must Go

I was home last weekend for a trip into NYC with my girlfriend and my girlfriend's cousin (visiting from Taiwan). My younger brother, his boyfriend and his boyfriend's mother came up from Long Island for the weekend also, and we convened at my parents house.

The problem, I was told, is mold. Mold is running rampant in the musty basement and something drastic simply needs to be done to address it. The stagnant Opium Den, privy to not so much as an odd eddy of fresh air (save by opening the small window, which almost never happens anymore) is particularly prone to the mold problem. I have to admit that the problem is a real one; there is a dense, unwholesome feel to the air in the place, and the many overlapping rugs that line the floor have a strange, perpetual and disturbing 'damp' feel to them. Cobwebs also hang from the intricate and interwoven ceiling fixtures and will simply never get cleaned or dusted. Dust is another matter entirely - I have no idea how many sticks of Nag Champa (or cones of Nag Champa, or myriad other incense) have been burned in the room, but it must surely add up to several large cases, and a fine dust of it, along with the requisite everyday 'house' dust, covers everything. The air filter, long nothing more than a choking, inert white-noise machine, has only been switched on during every visit home out of tradition, and for the tiny red LED that sits atop it - a tiny star in the inky Opium sky that leaves a void when absent. We actually ran out of beds during this particular weekend visit, and I opted to pile blankets on the floor and sleep on them upstairs , rather than sleep in my bed in the Opium Den - it's just gotten too squalid for me.

Anyway, I understand the necessity of dismantling the room now, and in a few weeks when I return home again, I will do just that. It will be an enormous job. I'm not happy about it, but it does feel right somehow to be doing it. It's been a weird, incomprehensible part of who I am for the past few years - but whether or not I'm in a different place now from when I really needed it on a psychological level to be there waiting for me - I need to be in a different place, and it's time to be.

I arrived home with a few accouterments, as I often do, to add to the room - most of them never made it up (there seemed little point after I heard the news regarding the future of the place) but one did - I threw it together a few hours before we left for NY in my home in Cambridge, and Punk Duck will be the last new object to adorn the Opium Den. I spotted it as I was walking home from the T with my girlfriend a few weeks back - it was trash night, and a block or so away from our house was a pile of neat garbage cans. Atop one of the cans was an old duck or goose-shaped planter. I didn't want to grab it then, since my girlfriend would have thought I was being very strange indeed, so I waited for her to hop in the shower, then made the dash down the street. I found the duck, grasped the head, and found to my dismay that it was in worse shape than I thought - the neck was badly cracked, it was caked with dirt on the inside, and the whole thing was marbled with tiny surface cracks as if it had been outdoors for many years. I thought I might still do something creative with the head, so proceeded to twist it off (finding it more difficult than I anticipated) when I noticed two people sitting in lawn chairs on the porch of the house, only yards away. "You can take it if you want it" an elderly man said, to which I replied "Uh...just the head..." Huhhph" he snorted. I finished separating the head from the body and awkwardly said "Thanks." "Huhhph" I pretty much ran back to my house, but as I did, I heard a short conversation fading down the street: "Did he take that duck [or something to that effect]?" "Just the head - god knows what he wanted it for." "What?" "Yep, just the head . . ."

Before we left, I used a marker to re-assert the duck head's faded eyes, made a mohawk out of a local artist's sample card, pierced it's bill with two old earrings, gave it multiple stud piercings with round metal architectural push-pins and a 'tattoo' of a sticker I found in a drawer. Punk Duck.

I know the Opium Den will never exist again - there was too much time and meaning sunk into it to ever really emulate it - I know I'll have similar places in the future, but I fear I will never succeed in getting back into Eden - though it will most likely be the idea of the place and not the place itself that I will be chasing after. This is weird, but true: I've had a recurring dream (nightmare, really) for the past few years about being in the room, looking around and noticing things missing from the walls; like maybe all the printed-out pictures are taken down, or everything is gone from the ceiling. It's a disturbing feeling and almost always lead to waking up directly afterward. I don't really know how it's going to go, taking everything down and boxing it up, but I'm going to find out shortly.

I found this in my archives. I apparently wrote it in July of 2008, before any of the class stuff started. In hindsight it's pretty interesting to me, and also frightening (for reasons that later became clear):

July 25, 2008

I have a special place.

A sanctuary, really; dark velvet
shadows so deep that almost no
worries or concerns can penetrate
down into it. And it’s mine, and
no one else’s.

The Opium Den in my parent’s basement has grown so beyond what it was originally intended to be – it’s fulfilled its purpose in that regard in marvelous fashion, but it’s much more. It’s a culture, not merely a place- a state of mind and being embodied by a presence that has a life of its own and operates in complete and total congruence with my own consciousness.

The feeling I have when there is one of safety; imperviousness, really. I’m somewhere that no one else will ever truly understand, not even Andrew, who comes closer than anyone else. And I’ve made it secure to the point of fanaticism, with measures for protection and discretion that when taken out of context seem absolutely ludicrous and even a little . . . insane.

Screaming brains and Heathers, terrifying talking bunnies and a million other bits and pieces to frighten you. Drunken angels, sirenes and intoxicatingly beautiful female voices mesmerizing. Absinthe and rotgut, Buddha and bongs. The unceasing hum of ten trillion living particles; stardust. Nag Champa swirls and eddies amid the black, black light that only illuminates what I want it to, and shuts out everything and everyone else. This is my realm, and it’s become an obsession and . . . a curse?

Insanity. No one at the wheel insanity. A dusty old room in my parent’s -my parent’s- basement. My life hundreds of miles away across three states, yet here I come to escape it for a while. How can I even begin to justify what I am doing? Are there truly any valid excuses – for excuses they must be, if anything – for this kind of unabashed hedonism and nihilism? No. So instead of confronting the situation with empty hands, weaponless, we do nothing, and return to bathe in the smoke and the haze of the room in my parent’s basement.

Research Project

For my project, I'd like to explore how people personalize space in a more insular environment, particularly solitary dwellers, specifically relating to objects in the spaces. I think this would involve looking at the tie between the 'stuff' itself and what the stuff has to do with the idea of a particular space. Also, why people hang on to certain things but not others - like some objects that are constantly in a space that is otherwise dynamic.

There is a phenomenon in New York and probably other cities (and I'm sure outside cities also, but I find the phenomenon most compelling in cities) whereby "hoarders" exist - people who have ridiculous amounts of seemingly valueless stuff - old newspapers, old clothing and shoes, even empty containers. This would an extreme example of genuine eccentricity, and I don't want to verge into exploring mental illness, but I think that the principle might apply to different levels of 'hoarding.'

I think that some objects' perceived value versus actual (Personal) value might be strangely divergent. Even legitimate minimalists hang onto things which serve no real purpose, even on a grounding or psychological level, but upon even a little thought or reflection or goading they discover that their lives are not only no worse without the objects, but actually better and more liberated.

Some questions that that end might be what significance is attached to objects that are associated with a space, how it acquired that significance, and if the significance either fades over time or was illegitimate to begin with.

************

My favorite piece or writing this semester so far was Zelinksy's article 'The Uniqueness of the American Religious Landscape.' I like his narrative style - it presents the evidence in a clear way yet was still full of anecdotal examples that made it colorful and enjoyable. I think he also was able to interject some of his own views in a subtle way that still allowed the reader to draw his/her own conclusions.

Underground Week 5

To enter the basement room now is to be deluged with cultural iconography, imagery and media. almost all of it is benign in nature, at least to my sensibilities, and evocative of nothing but comfort, repose and peacefulness. The room is apolitical in nature; the only indication that politics even exist is a poster of 'Rambo' with Ronald Reagan's head photoshopped (though the poster almost certainly predates photoshop) onto his body and the text "RONBO" displayed at the bottom. My younger brother found it in some funky junk/coffee shop in Manhattan's rapidly disappearing Little Italy some five years ago and thought I would like it. I do (I self-identify, like he, as a liberal Democrat).
The 'energy' test for stuff in the room (when I was still putting time and energy into it) was twofold: Objects had to 1) have some soul or meaning to them and 2) not bring anything into the place that would disrupt in any way the chill atmosphere. There was the one place in the world I knew I could go into and find nothing that would well up stress, sadness, or even introspection of any serious nature in me by so much as glancing at. This effect developed, like so much else, almost inadvertently over time. The collective effect is almost always sufficient to swamp any hints of anxiety or bad vibes. Looking at Ronald Reagan's smiling mug in that context doesn't, as it normally might, bring up in me thoughts of spiraling federal budget deficits, threat of nuclear annihilation or ketchup as a vegetable; it instead invokes a simpler time in my life, before I was politically conscious in any meaningful way.
At the same time, the room isn't a place for pensive thought or reminiscing - it's about existing in the moment, independent and irrespective of yesterday or tomorrow. This, of course, is a double-edged sword. In such an environment it's easy to get carried away and descend into something that too resembles hedonism to be comfortable with. I had managed to create something that I never thought was even possible - a place in which life simply exists without. What goes on there truly just seems to be something apart. I know in reality the venue has nothing to do with it - it's really a state of mind that allows you to totally detach yourself from your all too real worries and stresses. I've never been able to do that before and truly didn't think it was possible. For some people, perhaps, but never me. It's like a quaint Rockwellian image of an old man going fishing to forget his life's shortcomings and lost loves; or maybe a financial commercial depicting a businessman absurdly kayaking on some river, complacent and with total peace of mind because his assets are in the capable hands of responsible stewards.

I've learned over time that it's never a well-conceived idea to draw such distinctions between what you consider your 'normal life' and anything else. For someone like me, the pitfalls of such a localized philosophy are intemperance, self-gratification and escapism.
I've lately curbed my use of the Room in the interest of my well-being. On the odd weekend I stay at my parent's house, I no longer sleep there unless there truly are no other beds available. I've also gotten real about the fact that being serious about exercise and certain of life's little vices are simply mutually exclusive. I still enjoy being in the place, and spend time there after hours either alone or with my brothers or friends, but I envision a time in my life when I won't need a sanctuary so removed from reality, then finally won't want one.

While I work toward that, in the meantime I do, sadly, need a place like that and derive comfort at times just knowing that my proverbial and psychological 'happy place' is quite real and there. But I believe it's a start.

Underground Week 4

"Do they think it's weird yet?" my brother asked me relatively early on in the annals of the Opium Den. He meant our parents. The room had surpassed a certain threshold, a tipping point really between what could be considered 'normal' and what was noticeably creeping toward the deep end. Beside that, certain drug references were already in plain sight for those who knew what to look for - several broken clocks adorned the ceiling and walls and all were set to 4:20. Wall and ceiling art abounded of latent and not-so-latent implications. "I want to see what we can get away with," I answered him.
My father was once a professional musician - he dropped out of Ithaca College as a sophomore in 1969 to play with his band, called "Klondike," full time. In a place of honor above the door rests one of the Room's most cherished relics - a fluorescent pink bumper sticker that reads "Boogie with Klondike." It's position there predates the room's current function and dates to when my father used the room as an erstwhile, awkward office at some point. For some reason, that fact makes it much more valuable to me.
My dad remains an avid musician, and goes through periods of relative inactivity punctuated by months of intense practice and playing. He currently plays in a few local bands with other people of his stripe and uses the Room as a practice space. It has several natural advantages for this, but the fact that it is in the basement (and the aural implications of that) are lost on no one. As a result, musical equipment litters the room, although everything has a definite fixed place. The accoutrements include a killer vintage Fender Princeton Reverb amp, a few mic stands, my fathers acoustic and electric guitars (a Guild and a Stratocaster), my electric guitar (I live in a large apartment building in Cambridge where I can't use it), picks, metronomes, finger slides, capos, a duffel full of harmonicas, binders of sheet music and lots of electrical cords.
That my father uses the Room as his practice space lends a crucial legitimacy to the Opium Den. In it's absence, other elements of the family (mom) would likely find the room intolerable, and the fragile armistice that we've achieved might be shattered in the name of common sense, cleanliness, and sociability.
Come to think of it, it is odd that my dad has been so cool about it - he genuinely seems to only enjoy the extra atmosphere that the bizarre surroundings afford and hasn't once made so much as a comment in the spirit of my mother's thinly veiled disdain. In fact, I distinctly remember a few benign observations that almost amount to compliments.
There is little conflict of room usage when I am home on the odd weekend; although occasionally my dad sets up shop to practice for an hour or two and I give him the space and time he needs. Sometimes, we even play together in the room, though lately our overlapping music interests are limited to less popular stuff that I have introduced to him as well as some universal classic rock. When we do, I feel most surprised that not even a mention of the less-than-sane roomscape around us is forthcoming.
Overall, there's no denying it's the seclusion afforded by the room that is it's biggest draw for all who use it. It's so far from any regularly used space or travel conduit in the house that almost never do visitors or even some members of the family have reason to enter it. This quality makes for a slight feeling of exclusivity regarding it. When I'm visiting home, however, the place does feel almost entirely mine despite the fact that my father uses it to practice and my brother (who lives in NYC and is home more often than I) sometimes brings friends down there to watch movies or whatever.
The door has several locks on it, including a few that I moved from the door of an adjacent room: a hook-and-eye, a chain, a padlock-ready latch and the lock on the heavy doorknob itself. I almost never use the locks and have no real reason for them to be there, but they're a weird comfort nonetheless.

Underground, Week 3

As time went on, I found that, back in Boston, certain things began to catch my eye that would ordinarily garner no interest. These included the disregarded cast-offs of some of the nicer neighborhoods in Cambridge. Curbs became potential treasure troves where one might happen upon needful articles.
Character or 'soul' became the prime requisite for any potential addition to the Room. Things with no history or significance were worthless. Used things, even if I knew nothing about their past, seemed more desirable. Each addition, provided it was of sufficient quality, brought a new energy into the Room. A pillow from the couch of my deceased Nonna (that's Italian for grandmother), an indescribable rusted metal widget that had served some municipal purpose for seemingly long decades, only to end up in the middle of the street in front of the house one brisk night (a contribution of my younger brother), paintings done and forgotten by art students I'll never know. Some objects or images from venues that I would disqualify out of hand I found to be, on the contrary, quite apt. A trip to the dollar store, for instance, yielded an oriental cane in the design of a dragon. On the one hand, it was a cheap piece of commercial crap with seemingly no soul to it. On the other hand, it was a real wooden cane, hand painted and jeweled with glass marbles, that someone halfway around the world had labored to produce using skills (for the non-automated aspects of it's construction) that I myself did not possess; skills that had most likely been honed via unfathomable repetition. And here it was, via airplane or ship, being sold for a dollar - a dollar - in upstate New York. What pittance could the worker who produced it possibly have netted for his labors from that one particular wooden cane? It rests, with another ornate cane brought back by my grandparents from some long forgotten trip somewhere exotic, by the door.
The object that comes most to mind was a wooden pulpit that my younger brother and I found on the curb in Newton on one of his visits up, years ago. It was painted a pallid yellow and looked a bit beaten up. It was about four and a half feet tall, had a slanted top for an open book, a shelf underneath for more books, and a wooden cross affixed to it's front. It was itself in front of a church and was clearly being disposed of. Without a second thought, we snatched it up and put it in the trunk of my car. I lived with several housemates in Waltham at that time, and couldn't quite bring myself to bring it up into the place. It sat in the basement for a year or two, occasionally I had to rescue it from the garbage pile on my own curb, since no one in the building claimed ownership. My landlord himself once lamented to me that he had personally put it on the curb the night before, only to find it back in the basement the next morning - perplexing because he had asked everyone in the house if they new anything about it and no one claimed any knowledge. I shrugged, said something like "that is odd" and continued with whatever I was doing. I didn't really know why I lied about it, what I was keeping it for, or why I even wanted it, but it had accrued so much character and had so many near-misses that I felt I had to keep it.
The pulpit came home with me when I moved out of Waltham, and sat in yet another basement (my parents') for a few years, until the basement Room became mine. My parents hated it from the first. My father (who, like me, is Jewish) told me unequivocally that it was 'disrespectful' (to the catholic faith, I gathered) to have it. My mother (who is Catholic), simply deplored it for what it was - a beaten-up eyesore that served no conceivable practical purpose and was creating yet more clutter in her basement. I moved it into the Room and it served as a great stand for my TV. I really meant no disrespect by having it, it wasn't displayed in any particular irony, I simply liked the character of it and thought it added something intangible yet of value to my space. How many sermons, prayers and eulogies had been delivered from it? The face of the TV, perched on the pulpit above the cross, assumed an eerie, incandescent glow under the black lighting, giving it the aura of a slightly creepy shrine to entertainment or some such. This was totally accidental and is illustrative of how objects can achieve a purpose and personality of their own, independent of ones intentions, in the right circumstances.
In the end, my parents finally got their way when I showed up at their house with an unexpected fourteen-foot kayak that I needed to stow there. They hated the idea of keeping the kayak there and flatly refused to unless I, in exchange, finally got rid of the pulpit. I really had no choice now but to acquiesce, but couldn't bring myself to throw it away or discard it (I also knew better than to ask my girlfriend if it could find a place in our apartment.). I drove it back to Cambridge and found a Salvation Army goodwill store on Mass Ave, and finding no one near the door, hastily dropped it near some end tables below a hand-written sign that read "do NOT just leave furniture here, you must register" . . . etc. I've wondered since then if anyone had attached any significance, religious or otherwise, to the fact that it had appeared so suddenly and without explanation. I offhandedly imagined some worker, upon returning from a bathroom or cigarette break and finding it, taking it as a sign that s/he should begin doing God's work and travel around the country preaching the word, from behind the mysterious pulpit, to whomever would listen.
Objects which are so clearly old and history-laden can conjure their own stories if allowed, and sometimes, I think, what I don't know is more significant than the potential truth. With regards to the Room and it's aggregate energies, this creates an aura about the place, abetted by the requisite black light, incense, music, etc. that to me hovers between joy, comfort, security, familiarity, empathy, sadness, finality and regret in varying chemistry.