The same week that I took this image, I moved into my new house. Since the house is nearly 40 years old, it has seen its fair share of changing conceptualizations of place. My awareness—through doing my readings for this class—of my own role in this process has been compelling, as my fiancé and I make small changes to the place somebody else called home less than a month ago. The walls are different colors and our furniture (that bares its own set of memories) is filling. Beyond these features, we have also begun brainstorming how we will approach further changing and customizing our place—renovating the kitchen, replacing the closet doors, refinishing the fireplace. Ultimately, I am taking what somebody else made meaningful and turning it into meaning for myself and my little family.

This all goes to say that taking an image of a place in my own environment is more complicated than I anticipated because my place is at a point of transition—its new to me and I am new to it. But, the rainy day that I read Ulysses while my cats slept on the chair besides me is part of that building of my place. Now, this place is where I moved in one weekend, and the following weekend I flew out to Europe for half a month (leaving my dear fiancé with all of the boxes to unpack). Furthermore, what I am doing right know—reading books for Ireland and writing this blog post—is one of the earliest memories established in this place.

(Here is a nice photo of my fur babies from a few minutes after. They were essential, in my opinion!)

#DubBelGSU #PreDepartureBlogPost