beds in many places

I've always had feelings for the places I sleep. This is the reason why I had to move out of my old house, where I was sleeping on a twin size mattress which rested upon a full-size futon frame-- there was nothing to be proud of, and neither of those mismatched components belonged to me. I moved into my new house with Susan and Erin and got a bed frame for free off craigslist and a mattress from Ikea and had my first real bed in San Francisco. It wasn't the pricetag that made them mine as much as the dramatic selection process at Ikea (thanks to the patience of my dear friend, Georgia), the hour it took me to get the bed frame together and the configuring of the bed in my new small room so that I could still access the closet and open the door to the hallway.

In college I did a small drawing project for Leslie Snipes for which I drew each of the beds I had slept in or had played monumental parts in the history of my sleep-- which is saying a lot since we are asleep for 30% of our lives. So I drew my crib, the mini-bed I slept on from when I was 2 until I was 5, the bed with drawers underneath that I slept on from when I was 5 until I was 6, my first box spring bed that I slept on from when I was 7 until I was 12, my first full size bed I slept on all through middleschool and highschool, my reversion back to twin-bed status for the first two years of college, the first bed I bought myself the summer before my junior year. And then of course Beccas bed, Tims bed, and my parents' bed (which I drew twice because my parents sleep at different times of the day).

It was a good project, and I've been thinking about how I might reinvestigate it, maybe by making quilts from those drawings and adding all the beds I've slept in since then. It will be interesting to go through the process of figuring out which ones deserve the status of having been "monumental" and which ones do not. It may have been easier then because most of those beds had been attained through circumstance and not by choice. Since college I've moved eight times and have slept in countless subletted beds and ones of short-lived affairs. This past week was the first time in San Francisco that I let myself sleep in until the afternoon and saw how my room looks during the day, like in this picture. It was lovely, and I predict a long-term relationship unfolding.