Bedroom

The wall across from the door to my room has an enormous Starry Night poster and a long rectangle painting of a magpie perched on a long thin branch I did in high school (it has a yellow-green background), as well as various cards and quotes and sticky notes I have taped up or visitors have taped up for me. There is a picture of my brother and I sitting on a coach. We are very young, and I am unaware that he is attempting to steal a sandwich from my hands while I am distracted, deviously, with an outthrust lower lip. There is a drawing of an owl. There are the metal silhouettes of mountains my brother milled on the plasma cam and hand pounded. There is a stick eaten away by worms. “Tuit” has been written on it in sharpie (get it?). There is an orange acrylic skier and doodles of flowers and my favorite quote by Martin Luther King Jr. My bed is covered in the jean quilt my Gramma Joy sewed for me in high school. The pillowcase is black with neon colored ski boots. My desk is dark blue and dominates the right corner, the shelves at least four inches too deep for practical use (I designed and painted and my dad built it for me. I still get blue marks on my sleeves if I sit with my elbows on it for too long). The carpet is brown and covered in scraps of paper and crumbs and dirt (we don’t own a vacuum…I try to pick up by hand the more noticeable debris). The top of the desk is littered with Kerr jars, sunglasses, water bottles, my bike helmet, my bike gloves, loose change, two of those ski holder thingies I don’t use but Gramma keeps sending back with me, and containers housing various types of loose leaf tea. The second shelf is books, mostly from last semester, as well as a 3D paper stegosaurus, a rock, some SassySours from last semester, and a yam. The last shelf is books from this semester, more tea, a package of ziplock bags, honey, and a large obviously homemade purple and blue spiral mug. The wall above my desk has a Rossignol poster of Micah Black, a pastel drawing, a hairy shirtless man on a motorized bike on a highway (“look into the now”), a yellow submarine calendar (for 2011, still open to December), a picture of two men in tuxes on a tow rope at Bridger (the sky is aqua marine, their hands raised in twinned triumph). Snowshoes lean against my desk. Gloves are usually on the floor, under the heater that seems to blow more cold than warm air, and always with a kind of spontaneous aggression that surprises me. My ski boots are in the closet, my liners removed and drying under my mirror. The windowsill is lined with rocks. Most of them have been drawn on with sharpie. Next to my bed is an old wooden Carnation crate. Hats and mittens and headbands live inside the crate, and a blue ceramic lamp (nine dollar super steal) sits on top of it and clicks ominously when it’s turned off.  Next to my closet is a box full of canned food—but mostly canned mandarin oranges and cranberry sauce because I dislike these sorts of things in cans. On the opposite wall, there is a Spy Optic poster, a hedgehog card, some ski maps, doodles of trees and leaves, a burlap sack from costco that used to house rice, a Calvin and Hobbes comic, sticky notes, a pink card with a care bear that says “you make my heart happy”, a mustache named Murphy, and a blue triceratops. The shelves above my head hold books, hemp, a baseball mitt, art supplies, two Lost Trail hats, and snacks. The last thing I see before I go to bed is either a small Eric Carl illustration of a butterfly and sun next to my head or the blue light from my computer charger.