One of my neighbors apperently had a professional photograph their living-room mantlepiece, and has propped up a 3’x2′ print of the result on a stand in the lobby.

That could be my living room, but isn’t. Suddenly all my DVDs and IKEA shelves feel — I won’t say vulgar; careless? Unexamined? (Okay, the 40-inch television, in my tiny Edwardian apartment, feels a little vulgar.) It would be nice to grow into a space over years the way that one seems to have been grown into. It would be nice to reconcile that with the way that after three or four years in any one place I seem to need to put several time zones between that place and myself.