Stranger Than Fiction, 20

I moved to a room in a shared house in the East Side.  It was on the roof of a tall gaunt house and I shared one bathroom with four other dysfunctional males.  My room was small, but boasted huge windows and a view on three sides.  There was a grove of cherry trees just below me and spring was wonderful with the massive cloud of white blossoms just below.

I avoided my housemates, all of whom seemed troubled or mentally ill and to avoid conflict I took my meals and made my coffee in my room where I also painted.  The room was tiny, perhaps sixty or seventy square feet, but the unfettered view made it seem expanded and limitless.  The sunsets were glorious as was seeing the stars at night through my window as I lay in bed.  I could barely make ends meet, but I did.  In the communal kitchen I would fix myself simple but delicious and nourishing vegetarian meals and carry them upstairs to eat behind my safely closed door.

I still wasn't well.  I tended to avoid people, but for three friends I felt I still had: Dopey, the Self-Proclaimed Apostle and a very sad young man whom I shall do nothing to identify on these pages.  I needed stillness and quiet.  I painted and studied Spanish which I quickly gained an early fluency in.  I sold some more paintings.  I also spent massive amounts of time in coffee shops where I read and wrote in my journal and developed my new novel.  I was content, if timid, frightened and unwell.  For a while I wrote letters for Amnesty International addressing government ministers of corrupt nations about human rights abuses.   I had recently become aware of the concept of human rights, that I also had human rights, and that I was part of a huge family of humans occupying the same wounded earth that we were all somehow related and indelibly mutually connected.  While I lived in this little room I was revisited with a new vision of love.

In the summer I found a white eagle feather.  I knew my life was finally going in a good direction.  Hope was born anew only to be challenged and very nearly uprooted again.