I experimented with the ?70s, with farmhouse accents, with psychedelic rainbow cactus prints On my first night in my barren new studio, six blocks away from the apartment I had shared with the wife I didn?t yet know was divorcing me, I crawled into bed and clicked on the Himalayan salt lamp on my nightstand. It cast a soft orange glow that I stared at from eight inches away until I eventually fell asleep. I wouldn?t sleep without it for a single night I lived there.
I never used a nightlight growing up. It?s not that I wasn?t afraid of the dark?as an adult, I still do not get in or out of bed without imagining something grabbing my ankles?but that I was embarrassed to be afraid of the dark. Yet one of the greatest gifts I got from my divorce was the gift, however fleeting, of not giving a fuck. What was sleeping with a light on, and all the vulnerability it implies, when I was weeping constantly, everywhere, or else wearing an expression that inspired strangers to gently ask if I was okay, and did I maybe need a glass of water" I was, save for a few cherished dating partners and budding friendships, alone. My family was in Canada and Australia. Most of my ?friends? in Los Angeles were really just my soon-to-be-ex?s friends. I was a freelancer and barely earning more than the poverty line. My identity had been eclipsed by the idea of who I was supposed to be within the power dynamics, articulated and otherwise, within my marriage. That marriage was probably endin...