inner space

I love my cube. Being an artistic type, one wouldn't automatically assume that cube dwelling eight hours a day would give me pleasure, but it does. I only wish it had a door. And a ceiling. I guess I'm just a claustrophile - I love small enclosed spaces.

As a child, I gravitated towards small spaces. I loved the tiny half-bath attached to my bedroom. I played in the narrow space between the wall and the hedge in the front of our house, and in the empty window box below our dining room window. For a while, I had a drafting table in my bedroom with a small filing cabinet under it. The space under the desk was much too wide, but the space under the desk behind the filing cabinet was a perfect little cave for hiding from the world.

And that's really what it boils down to. That's why I love these manufactured walls covered in grey burlap. I love having my own space. I love that it has drawers and shelves and nooks and crannies. I like to just go into my cube and hibernate. I don't even have to talk to anyone all day if I don't want to.

At lunch, I usually go out and sit in my car. It's perfect. I lounge in the back seat and eat my lunch and read my book and -- thanks to the modern marvels of tinted windows -- hardly anybody even knows I'm there.

I go home every night to an 800 square foot apartment and a boyfriend and a cat. I love it, it's a nice apartment, but I don't have any place to hide. I feel a little bit exposed without a tiny bathroom to shut myself in, or a desk to crawl under.

Maybe that's why I love my cube. It's an outlet (inlet?) for my need to be in a small space. I just have to resist the urge to crawl under my desk. It's just such a perfect space.