Regeneration X Read Free Page A

them with spot fixtures.”
    “Yes, consistent lighting would help.”

Chapter Two
    That time of year thou mayst in me behold
    When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
    Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
    Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
    In me thou see’st the twilight of such day.
    —William Shakespeare, Sonnet 73
    ・・・
    THE INITIAL CONCEPT HAD SNOWBALLED. IT STARTED with the bedroom and the need to defragment her mind. Then, after a long reprieve, the idea was eventually translated throughout the house to most other rooms and spaces. This time it wasn’t a childish motive—it was a live more efficiently initiative, an excuse which she viewed as another of her duties. Realistically, her notions were fueled by boredom, although it was also possible she wasn’t aware of it. Charley seemed to have been going through a mid-life crisis, for over ten years. She was consumed by the need for distraction—usually from the activities, she wished she didn’t have to partake in—so she wouldn’t have connected the projects with boredom on her part.
    A thorough cleansing scheme was one of those and it had all started with a simple dawning thought, propelled by the previous success with the bedroom and gallery reorganization. One Saturday she went looking through the cubbies, drawers, and storage places around the house in order to find something to put inside a decorative bowl she had just purchased. She had settled on some balls of twine or carved wooden ornaments—she’d seen something similar in a home décor magazine on the web. Her vision was stalled by the fact they didn’t own those items in particular and nothing else would quite do. She began to think she needed to go shopping again and just as she was about to text Becks and Inez,—her best friends, who also conveniently owned a home décor shop—it struck her as a cuff to the head might. Buying ornamental items, to put inside a decorative item, to embellish a tabletop is outright ludicrous . And this was exactly what she’d been doing with every vacant plot of counter- or table-top throughout the house.
    ・ ・ ・
    It took them over a year to clear the clutter, but it was worth it. When I think of the amount of stuff we accumulated over our combined lives … Charley over-analyzed everything—it was a consequence of habit and her long-time career as an editor of a sort-of analytical magazine. It was as if she were being paid to consider all the angles, even outside of work. In this case, she concluded a lot about why people consume so much nonsense— as if stuff was food —was either to gain approval from peers, a means of casting the perception of success or fullness of life. It reminded her of the show, Keeping Up Appearances .  
    Now their home was exactly how they both enjoyed it and not because of how it and they would appear to others. Michael had mirthfully expressed, “I’m glad we’re not sheeple. That would be baaah duh.”
    But soon after, whenever anyone visited their place, annoyingly, their primary reaction was a euphemistic, “Your place is so organized and tidy,” or “Did you just move in?” generally followed by, “Oh right, you don’t have kids.” I wonder if people realize they acquire many of their belongings before having children . Charley would have said as much, but it would probably have come off as snarky and to no purpose.  
    Regardless, as a result, they rarely invited guests over, but they’d also become more introverted and reserved over the years—for other reasons. For one, Charley didn’t want to feel defensive for the choices they made, there was no purpose in that either, but also she felt the world was moving frighteningly in the direction of the Matrix and she refused to adopt fully this unreal—becoming too real—society as her own.
    She had always been an opinionated person and was still, but in a more private way—markedly different from her outgoing,