Streets Broad and Narrow

As promised, a photo of my new place. This photo is significant for two reasons -- the art and the bookcase.

The bookcase is one of two that I stuffed to the gills and am very happy about (see previous post). The art has a lot of backstory.

In March 2001 as a birthday present to myself I bought this print of The Wassail, by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a Scottish architect and artist whose work I am inordinately fond of. I of course meant to have it framed immediately. Life, however, intervened and it wasn't until almost a year later that I managed to have the time and the money simultaneously to get it done. But I finally did.

Shortly thereafter my relationship with P. became rather more serious and we began to talk about me moving to Madison and moving in with him. I decided to hold off on hanging the print until I knew for sure if I was staying or going (why make holes I'd just need to clean up in a few months?).

I did wind up moving in with P., and I toted my little print with me to Madison. When I moved in, P's apartment was completely bachelor paddish and had a sort of black leather and chrome thing going on that I think he meant to be sleek and modern but wound up being rather frighteningly S&M-y. My picture didn't really fit in. I wanted to hang it up anyway, but I ran into some fierce opposition both on stylistic grounds and because P. has some weird OCD thing against making holes in the walls, especially of rented places. And so my picture stayed in its box.

When P. bought his condo last year and we moved into it, I was so excited that finally I would be able to hang up my picture. Unfortunately we could not agree on where or when and as the application season progressed I began to sense that I probably would not be staying in Madison and so I put my poor little print away again.

Five and a half years later and I finally have the damn thing up on a wall. It looks great.

While there are things about living alone again that I may not like so much, there are some things that I have definitely missed. :)