As self-crowned, self-proclaimed Empress of Everything (mistress of none), I have always enjoyed the ease and luxury due my supposed station. I eat well, travel relatively often, and keep the finest of company. It’s only appropriate that I should also live in the palace of my own choosing, or better yet, in various fantastic palaces in different fabulous parts of the world whenever I happen to be there. Of course, the locales and the company I keep in them determine my level of happiness far more than the buildings and their furnishings do themselves. Isn’t that always the way? No matter how plush it is, a glamorous structure is only a gilded cage if it allows no light of love and adventure into it and no correspondingly venturesome, happy soul out of it.

So far I’ve managed to establish my string of palaces remarkably well, along with fulfilling my many other requirements of that life of luxury I don’t necessarily deserve but am quite capable of desiring. I’ve stayed in, lived in, visited, and wandered through many a grand, gorgeous, impressive place. I’ve designed many on paper and in my mind that would knock the socks off of any person who saw them. Yet I still can’t understand the people who look at glorious, showy homes and think only of whether the places would genuinely suit as their own dwellings. If your energies are devoted solely to thinking that “this master bedroom is too small,” all I can think is that your imagination is too small, your life too tightly fitted around what you perceive as Impressive Enough, to allow you to find your palace in whatever motel room or suburban house with one bathroom your life lets you land in at the moment.

Many of the palaces I’ve inhabited I have done only as a passerby, a visitor, a tourist. And I have nothing against that at all. After all, wherever I close my eyes to sleep, even the most cramped bedroom with a creaky, narrow, deeply bowed bed where the very middle of the mattress is the only almost-level spot to rest, I can turn it into any one of the palatial places I’ve visited, or continue to invent my own. The roof I am under is irrelevant in determining the luxury of my existence, so long as it’s safe and not lacking a place to lie down without breaking anything (furniture or me; I prefer to keep both intact) and not hideously cold or hot or wet. In my dreams, I remain Empress, and there I can build and inhabit the most astounding of palaces if I choose to do it.

As such, I am also constantly grateful for the many wonderful places I’ve visited, stayed,  and/or lived, and especially for the extensive ranks of friends and family and acquaintances who have through their immense kindness consistently supported my ability to live—and feel—like royalty.