In My Room

I have medical confirmation. It’s stress.

See, the corner of my left eye won’t stop twitching. You wouldn’t notice it to look at me. I look normal. Or whatever I normally look like. But I can feel it. And I can see it.

I have what my grandmother used to call “bedroom eyes.” She had ’em too. I think the phrase has something to do with the “come hither” look inherent to them, like I’m kind of winking all the time. As far as I’m concerned, bedroom eyes are just squinty little slits. Coupled with the most-Germanic brow my father loaned me (you know, in terms of the gene pool), well, I don’t have a whole lot of space to look out of. And lately, everything I’ve been seein’ looks like it’s filtered through through a strobe light.

It started last week, pretty much as soon as I got back from Sundance. I got back at midnight Wednesday, and was in the office eight hours later. A new employee of mine was waiting at my office door. It was meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting … You get the idea. I thought that Sundance was insane and busy? Ha! The MTV is out of control right now. We’re launching a new (as of yet unannounced) project that is so stressful, well, it’s making my eye twitch.

Now, there is one place I can go where my eye doesn’t twitch: my bedroom.

I was reticent to move to my new apartment, primarily because it was $500 more a month than the apartment I already couldn’t afford. But (truth be told), my mother talked sense into me. I swear to God she said, “Benjamin, it’s a big boy apartment.” I swear to God.

And she’s right. For one thing, it’s within spitting distance of the Museum of Natural History. I can see the blue glow of the Rose Space Center from my roof. For another, it’s a block off Central Park. I can see trees from my bedroom window. Most importantly, though, it’s flooded with light.

Any New Yorker will tell you that quality of life in this city is in direct relation to the amount of direct sunlight one receives. And on that front, with an office 29 floors above Times Square, and a bedroom with more glass than plaster, well I’m lucky.

It hasn’t always been so. My freshman year dorm room at Syracuse had just one window that opened up on a ventilation shaft. No sunlight. No breeze. No clouds. And it was Syracuse, which was opressive to begin with. In an effort to not sink into complete and total soul-crushing despression, I got an ultraviolet glow bulb at K-Mart and put it on a timer over my bed. It kinda’ helped.

These days, waking up to the blue sky, and often, the pale moon dipping below the skyline, well, I can’t complain. I often lay there in my flannel sheets a minute longer just to take it all in: the sky, the clear, blue, promising sky. And then I climb out of bed, and begin twitching all over again.