Camping-In: My Sleeping Closet
For the past 3 weeks I’ve been sleeping in a closet. That’s right, a sleeping closet. It’s all part of camping-in (as opposed to camping-out) as I get settled in my new place.
When I first arrived, I grabbed a few things from my father’s house, along the camping-in model (something to sleep on, something to sleep under, and something to make tea in) and went over there. The place was a vast sea of wall to wall white carpet. I began dreaming my new place into being. “Visualizing,” my farmer grandfather used to say long before the pnrase became expensive.
Since it was so empty, I decided to sleep in the walk-in closet which felt cozy in contrast to sleeping in the midst of the white carpet sea in an empty, echoing room.
I like my sleeping closet. It feels like a pullman berth on a sleeping car several decades past. Private, intimate, cave-like and womb-like.
Visitors ask, “So where do you sleep?” and then bust a gut laughing when I show them. It will all change soon when my brother brings a proper bed over. Then the closet will become my meditation room. And, maybe I’ll still sleep there when visitors come calling overnight.
Or a tent? Got any secrets in your closet?
A friend of mine grew up in a two-story house. There was a sort-of walk-in closet with a very low ceiling under a dormer. They kept the closet empty, and it was a wonderful place to spend an afternoon of “play like” (the word “pretend” came along as vocabularies matured). Years later, the friend’s daughter and her cousins found the same place to be just as wonderful. Some things are timeless.
I want to visit your den-cave-sleeping closet! Shades of childhood and the hidey-holes of old houses. I love it that you have come full-circle! Enjoy!
Arletta