Reconstruction Now

Recent weeks have seen some bewildering activity in my apartment. One of my roommates has been making a short film, and he used our living room as a shooting location. As the film is a rather fantastical one and he is an exceptionally gifted set designer (among other things), it was not merely a matter of setting up some cameras and lights. Instead, he built the interior of an old German village cabin there.

It was astonishing to look at once finished, and quite interesting to track its progress leading up to that, but its impact on our daily lives could not help but color our perceptions of it, or mine anyway. Very quickly, that area of the apartment became a defacto no-go zone, unfit for watching television, eating in or sitting. It was necessary to shift those activities elsewhere, and for me that was mainly into my bedroom, wrecking the good habit I'd established of not eating in my bedroom.

At long last, though, the set has come down. I find that I miss it a little, at least in that it blotted out the natural sunlight that ordinarily streams through and renders televisions and computer screens difficult to see. Outside of that, I'm not sorry it's gone. I am attempting to re-establish the patterns I had before the set disrupted them, such as eating there on the coffee table, and doing my writing outside of my bedroom's isolation.

My hope is that my mood will improve. Through good times and bad of the last couple months, I have retained a frustratingly persistent irritable attitude. I wondered if the disruption to my routine presented by the set's occupation of the living room was responsible, and we will see soon enough. Being among my roommates instead of alone in my bedroom may prove the remedy, and if so you may detect the results in my writing.