Just over a week ago, I moved from a closet of a room into one at least triple the size.  One of my roommates moved out to study abroad, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have more than three square feet of space in which to move around.  I’m still in the throes of settling into my new room; still trying to decorate the walls, arrange the furniture, and fill the surfaces with contents that are distinctly “B.”

My first priority was to furnish my bed: multiple fleece blankets and pillows for optimal comfort and warmth.  Next, I set up my bookshelves.  Arranging my books – many of which I have yet to read, but which have been sitting patiently on my various shelves over the past few years – was an especially fulfilling experience.  There’s something about the newness of my room (or maybe the larger space itself) that makes me feel like I will actually make room in my life to reading some of the books over the next few months.  Someone once told me that I am relentlessly optimistic.  While I’m not sure that I agree with this assessment, I suppose my ability to convince myself anew each semester that I’ll make a dent in my reading list is reflective of that constant optimism.

Much to my dismay, my Big New Room came with a Really Old Radiator.  Over winter break, I discovered that the radiator was leaking – spraying scalding hot water from an opening between two parts of the valve, and dripping more water onto the linoleum floor.  I was adjusting the heat one morning last week when the entire knob came out of the socket.  I don’t have much technical experience with radiators, but I’m pretty sure that’s not supposed to happen.  Since then, I’ve woken up each morning to a little stream of water running down the middle of my floor.  Needless to say, I need to put in a work order to have my radiator fixed.  Someone else might have submitted the work order the first time they discovered a problem with the radiator, but I’ve put up with it for almost two weeks now.  I say all this, because it’s an example of procrastination – a skill (if I can even call it that) I mastered in high school, and which I still struggle with.

A biking map of Brooklyn on the wall. That’s the first thing you’ll see in my room. Right underneath it, a white hybrid Giant bicycle.  A small wooden plaque with a picture of a bicycle with “Brooklyn” written above it is on display across the room. It’s rather misleading, actually. I do love both. Brooklyn, my new borough, has fast come to feel like home. I love the quiet, the sunshine that comes in through my two windows, my Park Slope island of peace within the city. And I love biking, too. Yet, these days, my bicycle serves more as a towel rack, its tires near empty, as I wait sheepishly for the warmth of spring to once again brave the streets of New York. The map is outdated in showing current bicycle lanes, yet it functions perfectly in helping me to map out my walking routes to Shabbat dinners across the borough.

Every item in my room has its obvious function, which is often secondary to its less apparent use. Besides my bicycle towel-rack and Shabbat map are my bookshelves. Two of them frame my room, and they are decoration. It’s not because I like to show off my collection (though who doesn’t, really?), and not only because I wedge photos of family and friends among the books. Rather, they adorn my room because they are arranged by color. My blue shelf of siddurim, Tanakhim, and a scrapbook sit above the green/purple shelf, a glorious mix of ancient and modern, traditional and trailblazing. Below that, the red/orange shelf, a similar mix, and at the bottom, the classic brown of our holy texts. Finally, a just started jigsaw puzzle on the floor of Norman Rockwell’s “The Shiner”. Primarily a source of relaxation, its secondary function is a reminder that sometimes a little bit of spunk can go a long way.

Organization has never been my strong point. Everywhere I have ever lived, I have struggled with spatial organization. Or, better said, spatial disorganization.

My wife Deborah and I are very lucky. As freelance musicians and teachers, we are far from wealthy. Yet, due to some unusual circumstances, we live in a large apartment in a very nice section of Brooklyn.

What does “a large apartment” mean? It means that in addition to having a decent size bedroom, living room and kitchenette, we each have a “room of our own,” which we call our offices, or sometimes, our practice rooms.

But my office, or practice room, is usually so crowded with Yiddish, Hebrew and Cantorial books and sheet music, plus instruments, that I can barely move around.

Am I a hoarder? No. It’s not that bad. But I do have a problem, and it runs in my family. My mother and sisters are the same. Maybe it’s a psychological thing? My mother is a refugee. It’s pretty classic. Or maybe it’s just that this issue is my achilles heel. I’m not proud of it, but that’s the way it is.

I do work and study hard, though. And when I’m working at home, I work in the living room. But sometimes the living room isn’t available (we have a constant stream of overnight guests staying with us). So then I work and relax in the bedroom.

In the bedroom, I create a sort of psychic “room” of my own, for working. And for sleeping, too.

By my side of the bed there are usually 10-12 books. Some are the usual type of bedtime reading: Novels, biography, non-fiction, etc.

There’s a problem, though. I’m addicted to Jewish music tomes. These are huge, hardbound (and hidebound!) books full of obscure musical examples. The kind of thing you would find in a Jewish music library.

Huge, hardbound and hidebound? Heavy!

I don’t know about you, but when I read in bed, eventually I fall asleep. What happens when I fall asleep with a big, heavy book in my hands?

It falls on my spouse. Usually on her head.

Before I came to study at JTS, Deborah and I were more-or-less joined at the hip. We played together (we have a klezmer and Yiddish duo), taught together, traveled together. We even went to jury duty together.

We still do all of that (except the jury duty). But we travel together much less than we used to, now that I’m in school. We tour and teach together primary on my school breaks. She goes on tour while I’m at home studying.

The transition has been pretty difficult at times.

And the lead-up to my decision to go back to school was hard. We were both reluctant about making such a radical change in our life together.

But school was calling me. I kept reading the heavy subjects. And the tomes kept dropping.

Finally, we got the message. And Deborah said,

“That’s it. You’re applying to JTS.”

My bedroom at school is my own little apartment. It’s a living room, (sometimes) a dining room, and lastly, a bedroom. Besides for wall decorations, there is little space for creativity when it comes to the objects in my room, let alone a story. So instead, I will write about my childhood bedroom.

Until fourth grade, the centerpiece of my bedroom was a big white bookshelf. It loomed above me and was twice my size. So that I could reach the top shelf, a small purple step-stool rested against the bookshelf. I would pride myself on just how many books I had, as books were forced to squeeze tightly against each other and each shelve overflowed. Essentially though, my bookshelf was like nature—organized chaos. The top shelf was filled with books I would only read once. The second shelf were books that I read in school, in my book club, or were simply calling me to read them. The third shelf housed my favorite books, such as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe series, and other science fiction books that would take me to worlds that I could only dream about living on. The four shelf held inspirational books such as the Chicken Soup for the Soul series or books that told me how to deal with friendships, school, and growing up. In fifth grade, my mom came up with a theory that the bookshelf in my room attracted dust and therefore made me get sick constantly. Huge mirror-covered closets replaced my bookshelf.

When the bookshelf was gone, I didn’t spend as much time at night reading about other peoples adventures under my covers with a flashlight. Instead, I wrote about my own adventures. Initially, my journal was filled with different stories about aliens and space. As I entered and was traumatized by middle school (the horrors I was always warned about ended up being reality) my journal became my diary. Now in college, I find that when I go home there are certain phrases and words that describe how I am feeling at the moment. I started jotting them down on post-it notes and sticking them on my wall. The mirror-covered closets have been moved across my bedroom, and the post-it notes cover the spot where my bookshelf once stood.

Rooms are, and have always been a chance to curate the personal spaces and pieces that structure my life. The first memory I have of agency over a space is from my family’s move to North Carolina. My mother, in true style, gave my creative voice equal consideration in the process of designing our new home. I kept the many paint chips we collected over that first year, using them to decorate my bedroom walls; eventually, those colors joined the walls themselves as my mother and I painted colorful stars onto the walls with paint-soaked sponges. Bookshelves, dressers and handmade rugs soon filled the space of my room, leaving space for little else. The shelves of my room not only contained books, my ever-present companions, but also came to buckle under the weight of objects I placed into the nooks and crannies. Like their shelf-mates, these objects held stories; old coins, stuffed animals and pieces of bark were as much actors in my life’s story as the characters in the books I voraciously read.

As I grew older, the look of my room changed—but never the process. In the later years of living North Carolina, images joined the collections of objects that filled my space. As always, I paid intense attention to what surrounded me in the most personal of spaces, losing track of time as I turned my bedroom walls into exhibition spaces. Poems, drawings, photographs, letters, tapestries, paintings, magazine pages, ticket stubs…anything holding personal significance found its way onto a wall. In recent years, the idea of personal space has become even more pronounced while living with others. The walls of the spaces in which I live continue to be a reflection of myself, my experiences, and my creative process and create a space that feels like a home.

The wall has to be purple. It doesn’t really feel like it’s my space- the space that will hold me most comfortably- unless the wall is purple. Painting that wall was the first thing I did when I moved into my apartment. And the second was figuring out where to put my books. My life, looked at through the lens of my bedroom, is largely comprised by a combination of crafts and books. Crochet hooks rest on my night-stand and where you expect to find pens in a cup. Canvases stack up under my bed; spools of thread and skeins of yarn squish their way into a drawer or between books. These books are barely organized by topic and relate to both my Jewish interests and secular interests. The Jewish Study Bible rests next to Cutting For Stone, while The History of Love sits on my night-stand, merging my interests of great fiction with Judaism. The full set of Shulchan Arukh rests on my loft. I stare at it as I fall asleep and struggle over its place in my life.

And my room, unfortunately, is usually not very tidy. There’s no filth, but there’s always a bit of clutter. I sometimes think this physical state of my room parallels what my life looks like. I often feel pulled in many directions, thinking about work, school, friends at the same time and unable to totally get everything in order.

My room is the only space in my tiny, shared UWS apartment that is really mine, so most of what’s important to me is packed into that room. The four-picture frame above my bed tells that story: a picture of me with my aging Holocaust-survivor grandfather, beautiful roses from a garden in Jerusalem, three dear friends with me, and my three siblings with me.

As a native Guyanese, an American Citizen, and a Jew by religion first and culture second, I juggle several primary identities.  Perhaps the most accurate and succinct description of myself would be an American Caribbean Jew.  Thus, to reflect my multi-dimensional identity, I have hanging in my room four 3’ by 5’ flags: A Guyanese flag, an American flag, an Israeli flag, and a British flag.  Why a British flag you ask?  Since Guyana was a British colony until the 1960s, I grew up with a heavy British influence, both culturally and educationally.  Therefore, Britain has earned a spot on my wall to supplement my connection to Guyana.  The arrangement of the flags also holds special significance.  The American and British flags sandwich the Israeli flag to depict the close relationship these nations have as political allies, and also as signifier that they all share a similar importance to my identity.  The Guyanese flag, however, is draped across the ceiling tangentially to the wall the 3 other flags hang from, to show I relate the most and above all to my Guyanese heritage and nativity.

The rest of my room is very simple, which indicates my indifference to materiality.  My bed lacks a frame, and is just two mattresses stacked one on top of the other.  In addition, I have a dresser and a plastic cabinet for my files, papers, etc.  Having moved over 20 times, I learned early on that material objects are transient, and thus are not necessary to achieve happiness.  Sure, like most people I have clung onto a couple of childhood toys for nostalgias sake.  However, since so many things get lost from move to move, I grew used to letting go of material pleasures.  Thus, today I prefer to invest less time decorating my room, and more time building and growing the social relationships that are dear to me.