Tuesday, August 26, 2008

A Room of One's Own





By far, my favorite room in my apartment is the one that stands outside. The terrace off of my kitchen is small, 5 feet by 8 feet wide, yet big in utility. It is there that I am able to write, observe nature, watch kids at play, eat Sunday brunch with Kaj, and think about something or nothing at all. It is a place where I am able to beat back the long journey into night that haunts people who suffer with the affliction of being a writer who needs to write. It is a room of my own.


The title of this piece was appropriated from Virginia Woolf’’s famous essay from 1928, which speaks to women and fiction. She chose to address the topic not directly, but using a fictitious story where Woolf concludes that a woman must have money and a room of her own to write fiction. In 2008, a full 80 years later, I will take it a step further. Everybody needs a room of one’s own, which, for me, suggests the need to support the deep urging for individual expression.

Sometimes I hate this need to express. Sometimes I don’t want to say the things that I am thinking for fear of not being understood. But this is not a choice for me. The frequency by which I express is inherently tied to my mental state of being. Yes, I am saying that I will become insanely depressed if I do not write. There. I’ve admitted it. Something I’ve always have not wanted to say - I, Lana Garland, suffer from depression. And sometimes what I have to say is dark, confused, and downright ugly—but my truth.

I don’t know when it is my true self or when it is the depression talking. But I have made a decision. No banners. No book. No hoopla. My depression is important and not important at the same time. What is critical here is that I live a life, calling on all of my super-powers to be the Cleopatra Jones-inspired, seeker of all things spiritual, Foxy Brown-ish lover of writing, performing literary feats of sublime rock-steady across the written and visual universe.




I wish you the world. I wish you your voice. I wish you a room of your own.