You see a door & at eye level there is a sign, it reads: VASHTI’S ROOM. The letters are each stickers of varying color, font, & texture. They start out evenly spaced apart, but toward the end of each word, the letters squish together, barely fitting onto the sign. It seems that whoever made the sign didn’t put much forethought into it; That being said, it’s still a cute sign nonetheless. Its haphazard design is endearing, if anything. At the very least, the sign has some sort of homemade charm. Even if there was not thought put into its creation, there was love, enough love to make up for the lack of thought.

Beneath the colorful sign reading: VASHTI’S ROOM, there’s a small note, handwritten in a cursive scrawl, barely legible. It reads: It seems that you’ve reached my room. This is my room, made for myself, with only myself in mind, but that doesn’t mean you are unwelcome here. There may be a door, but it is always open to you. If you knock, I will open it with a smile. If I am gone, you can let yourself in. You reach for the handle & after just barely turning it, the door swings open, almost as if it moved by itself.

Without moving forward, without entering, you can see much of the room. It’s not exactly what you expected. The room has a window & the window is open, a cool breeze washing over the room. Outside the window is a blue sky, white clouds abound & you think many of them are in the shape of angels. There are a few pigeons fluttering about right outside, looking as though they can fly in at any moment. The breeze shuffles around the various papers on the desk, drawings & writings. You wonder if that’s why they seem to be in such a messy pile on the desk, but you realize the breeze wasn’t strong enough to have made that mess; It must’ve been Vashti. There is a laptop & some sort of journal on the desk.

The room is simple, but it is not austere. It seems to be well lived in & comfortable, though not quite cozy. It’s small, too small, and cluttered. It is cluttered because there are so many things, but also because it seems that no one has cleaned in a while. The bed is unmade, resembling a nest of comforters & stuffed animals & so many clothes are strewn about. They’re in two separate piles, (One clean, one dirty?), and some are hung off the back of the desk chair or a bedpost. Some of the clothes seem to be in prearranged outfits, maybe this sloppy person is also a planner? The clothes are colorful & are in a disparity of sizes, prints, & patterns.

Even the walls haven’t avoided the clutter; Various prints, posters, & clippings cover the walls like ivy overtaking a building. There’s no rhyme, but there does seem to be a reason. While nothing is cohesive, it somehow fits & you see a few things on the wall that you recognize: a Hello Kitty poster, a couple of Vocaloid posters, some FRUiTS Magazine cutouts, some Mary Oliver poems, a few Yoshitomo Nara pieces, some cheesy motivational stuff (mostly around the desk), and hey, is that a Maria Prymachenko piece hanging on the wall? No one ever talks about her!

There are shelves throughout the room holding knickknacks, figures, books. You’re not going to see anything else just standing here, what do you want to do?