How Much Room?

I need room.
I have to have plenty of space around me or I feel trapped. I’ve been claustrophobic all my adult life, but lately a new layer has been added. I feel crowded when I eat. Even when I have the table to myself.
I have to spread things out.
I like to read when I eat and it’s usually the newspaper. Broadsheets take up a great deal of space and I need it far enough away from me so that my almost ten-lustrums-old-laser-buzzed eyes can get a proper bead on the words.
In the past I needed a bit of free space around me, but managed to make do with whatever was available.
Not any more.
It’s gotten to the point where I can’t seem to get enough space on the table. No matter how much room I take it’s never enough and it’s making me growly.
A few months ago I had lunch with a friend and we sat at a table for two. I felt assaulted from the lack of room around me because the table itself was so small.
This sensation of crowding is expanding now to other areas. I feel better with the doors open in the house because it provides the illusion of space.
I find I have to raise my arms and spread them out or up as much as I can to open myself to the space around me. It’s as if I have to claim more physical area for myself. My territory must expand.
Lately I’ve found I need even more space to prep food. I get very irritated if I lack space when I’m chopping something and I’ve had to move the drain board away from the sink so I can have that space to work with, too. It still isn’t enough.
I’m not sure where this is going. Space is limited. Either I have to find out why this is happening so I can channel the expansion to the right area of my life, or we get rid of the furniture.
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What about you? Do you ever feel crowded? Do you need a great deal of space, or are you okay with just enough?

I need room when I chop.

Goodbye, Scotty

James Doohan’s ashes are being sent into space tomorrow.
(Read more here http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/04/02/doohan.ashes.ap/index.html)


It’s a poignant and fitting tribute to the man best known and loved as Lt.-Cmdr. Montgomery Scott, Chief Engineer of the USS Enterprise on the original Star Trek.

The original series was the best. It was never about space or special effects or science fiction. Because of that it stays in reruns and the episodes can be watched over and over again.

Star Trek was more real to me than anything on television.
I hadn’t realized how much of an impact the show had on me until one day in the early 1980s. I had a government drone job and was on my way back to the hive by way of a shortcut through The Bay store. A radio station was announcing a contest and I swear the prizes included “one of 10 Air Canada trips to the Neutral Zone!”

I’d go in a heartbeat.

Doohan’s death took a wee bit of my childhood with it. It’s a reminder of mortality and the bittersweet passage of time.
Consigning his ashes to the stars makes it real to me all over again.
Of course Mr. Scott is in space.
Where else would he be?