LALATOWN LIFE

“Pick one,” my sister said.

Pick what?

My sister studied physical education. Colors, interiors, decorating a house—these are not things she particularly enjoys deciding. So whenever there is something like that, she asks me.

“You pick.”

Recently, she was having the hallway of her building painted, so naturally, I picked the colors.

And while we were doing that, I wanted to give her a little present.

She had given me a very generous gift not long ago, and I wanted to do something for her in return.

So I said, “Okay. I’ll make you some objects for your place. With my drawings.”

That was how a citizen of Lala Town eventually became a ramen topper.

Which, now that I think about it, is a perfectly reasonable career path in Lala Town.

The funny thing is, this little experiment started making me think about the place where I will begin the second chapter of my life.

Wherever that place turns out to be, I want to make it completely mine.

I don’t want a closet that is simply a closet.

I want a closet where clothes and a tiny studio live together.

There might be a wooden or acrylic Lala & Stitch sign sitting there, about fifteen centimeters tall. An old metal cabinet, bought secondhand and painted a wonderful color, might hold my underwear and T-shirts.

Why do clothes have to live inside proper bedroom furniture or an official “closet system”?

Who decided that?

I’ll need a good chair in there too. Or maybe a tiny daybed. My back has opinions, so this part is non-negotiable.

I recently saw one at IKEA that opens into a little single mattress. Something like that would be perfect. I could hang a beautiful light above it, put my things around me, and suddenly that little closet would also be my studio.

Actually, I suspect I will have three or four studios.

One in the kitchen.

One on the balcony.

One in the closet.

And probably another one somewhere nobody intended a studio to be.

I want to break all those little rules.

And lately, I’ve realized that this is about more than decorating.

For a very long time, I had a terribly binary way of thinking.

Right or wrong.

Good or bad.

Stay or leave.

Keep your word or fail.

Black or white.

And perhaps the person most trapped by that way of thinking was me.

Sometimes something simply isn’t right anymore, and you can put it down.

I didn’t know how to do that very well.

I endured things because I had decided that leaving them would mean I had failed to keep a commitment. And if I failed to keep a commitment, that must mean I had done something wrong.

So I stayed.

I endured.

That was it.

Now I am becoming much more interested in everything between black and white.

All those shades of gray.

And strangely enough, my drawings have been teaching me about them.

One day, I was so impressed by a bundle of green onions prepared for pa-kimchi that I made it into a Procreate brush.

Just a bundle of scallions.

Then one day I looked at that shape and thought:

Wait.

Why can’t this be a frame?

So I erased what I didn’t need, kept the shape, and started putting my drawings inside it.

Suddenly a bundle of scallions wasn’t a bundle of scallions anymore.

It was a frame.

A little world.

An object.

Maybe something that could hang on a wall.

Maybe something that could sit on a shelf.

Maybe something else I haven’t thought of yet.

And the same thing began happening with my characters.

A drawing didn’t have to stay a drawing.

A Lala Town citizen could become a wooden object.

Or an acrylic object.

Or apparently, a ramen topper.

My shades of gray started multiplying.

First there were three.

Then seven.

Then a hundred.

Maybe a thousand.

I have better photographs coming. I really do.

The other pieces still have to arrive, and then my sister and I have to figure out where the magnets go, how everything should stand, what should sit where, and probably change our minds seventeen times.

But I couldn’t wait.

She already has the first pieces, and she keeps finding new things to do with them.

“Oh! I could put this over a teacup.”

“And I could put the teaspoon here.”

“Oh, this could hold my tea stick!”

She was so excited.

And listening to her made me unexpectedly happy.

It was joy.

Simple, uncomplicated joy.

This blog isn’t really here to sell you things.

Somewhere along the way, I realized it had become something else.

It has become a record.

I had been writing elsewhere for about six months before moving everything over and beginning again here on WordPress. I’ve been here for roughly seven months now, and after fifty-something posts, I recently looked back and thought:

Oh.

I grew here.

Without realizing it, I had been leaving little pieces of evidence.

This place has been quietly keeping the story of me closing one chapter of my life while beginning another.

Maybe that is why I’ve become so attached to it.

So I want to keep leaving things here.

The good news.

The strange experiments.

The things that don’t work.

The citizens who unexpectedly become ramen toppers.

And all the new shades that appear when I stop insisting that something has to be only what it was supposed to be.

Welcome to my 15 different shades of gray.