The World Around Us?

We had to observe the spaces in which we write. I happen to love this piece.

Observations

I write in solitude; I write in isolation. At times, in the darkness of isolation, honesty flows like black honey. Oil, ink, memories. Thoughts can flow in a climate of isolation when I’m feeling dark, when I’m feeling about writing about past things, shapeless shadows that have shaped the becoming of who it is that I am right now sitting in the solitude of my living room. The television is on, some football game is buzzing – crowds booing and cheering, old windbags blathering over the din, but generally I ignore it all, tuning into what’s really important. Ideas are floating around inside me with such immediacy and urgency that it just won’t wait until tomorrow. That’s what is important right now. And what’s more important is writing in my peaceful place; my tree house, hidden behind trees and safe from other people. This is a haven, a place of Zen-like tranquility.
Wooden floors creak and Foster’s paws swish and scrape as he sashays his way to my cozy bedroom to take flight, landing gracefully on the fluff of a winter comforter. I don’t mind the black fur that sprinkles not only my bedroom comforter, but my entire life; it serves as a reminder of my love for him and that he has made an impossibly large paw print on my heart and difference in my life. But there are times, in the middle of these silent, peaceful days that I notice that he’s not as fast as he used to be; he is getting a little grey around his muzzle. Automatically, I revert back to when he was a puppy, jet black with only a lolling pink tongue to break the shadow. Now, at least I can see his face when I take his picture, I think to myself. Knowing he’s rapidly falling asleep, safe from the outside world, breathing deeply and peacefully in a cadence like slow summer rain gives me peace. Though snow is falling now, blanketing the earth and my tree house, the house breathes with me, holding its breath while I write. Perhaps the house is waiting to see what I’ll come up with next, or perhaps it is simply entertained by having a writer in its womb. So many people have lived here, come and gone, and I the writer am transient as well. I think of the house as a bemused parent, watching and cradling me inside itself in an attitude of entertainment.
In the white, mint-freshness of winter mornings, a white, fluffy, impossibly soft robe swishes around my ankles as I stumble into the ceramic-tile floored kitchen to start the coffee brewing. It’s my own blend, lovingly crafted for my own pleasure, and occasionally for that of my guests as well. Add two heaping tablespoons, ten cups of water (hot or cold), and the red Kitchen-Aid life-giver bubbles and steams its way to completion. There is a sign adorning my kitchen cupboard that reads Instant Writer, Just Add Coffee. Well, that sign doesn’t physically exist, but I imagine it to be there while I drum my fingers on the counter, chin in the other hand, eyes trained on the brown steaming liquid of the gods dripping into a clear glass decanter. What sadistic bastard invented this machine? Probably a decaf tea drinker. Just like a man probably invented tampons, I laugh to myself, still waiting. It’s dripping so slowly, like molasses in a winter storm, and I like fast forward. But in this place, in my tree house full of white space, light, peaceful textures and cozy spaces, fast-forward is only for coffee.
In this space, time stands still and the house breathes with me, supporting and cradling my creativity. Tall slender windows let in early morning sunlight, bathing wooden furniture in its rays and shimmering over Foster’s fur as he gulps down his breakfast. Forward ticks the rooster clock in the kitchen, dancing away the time. Finally I sit on the sofa and cover myself from toes to shoulders in a chocolate and vanilla blanket that I made myself. It was my first blanket attempt, and I think I did quite well. It is eight feet long and double-thick for maximum fleece comfort, and my hand reaches out to seize a red jumbo coffee cup and I burn the tip of my tongue with its contents. I drink anyway, and the cup giggles and splashes back at me until I set it down. It’s okay, I say to the steaming cup. You and I will tango again soon. Until that time, though, my fingers seem to fly across the keyboard without my conscious self really knowing about it. Ten digits have a direct line to my brain, and that’s quite all right by me. I step outside myself sometimes when I write, and the best things seem to come out when I am not present for the party. “I” have checked out, but my fingers and the house help with saying what I have to say.
A wood, wrought iron and stone coffee table holds the red coffee cup, a coven of candles, and a selection of twelve books held captive between two bronze owls. These owls are two incredibly wise sentinels, standing erect on their own sets of bronze books, balancing on their own secret knowledge. Sometimes I wonder what they are thinking, staring into opposite directions, bronze backs against paperbacks.
Do they communicate with each other? Perhaps through the books that they hold erect between their bodies? Isn’t that the way a lot of us communicate? Through books, and through knowledge passed down generation to generation, so ingrained in us that we don’t even know we are merely repeating ideas from our ancestors. That’s a comforting thought for the most part, but when I sit down by my computer, attempting to write in a fresh new way, it can be frustrating to know that my ancestors, like the two bronze owls, are guarding ancient knowledge, amused at my vain attempts.
The books themselves are a conglomeration of different interests, a synopsis of my interests. Books on grammar and style; books on stock market investing; a thesaurus; fiction for pleasure; fiction for class. The distinction between the last two is a fine and yet blurry line. Anathem by Neal Stephenson is a book I would never have picked up for pleasure reading, but When the Wind Blows by James Patterson is a pleasure read that sits collecting dust, patiently waiting for my free time. Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi is a delightful combination of duty and pleasure. Regardless of their relative importance, all of the titles glow and flicker in candlelight, set off by the trio of Yankee candles, all flickering, emitting scent and light. The sparkling flames serve another purpose, though. They hypnotize, keep me from thinking too much and taking myself out of writing what I feel. Do you remember, in the dark of a summer or autumn night, watching a campfire? The entire group of people sitting around it suddenly become silent - hypnotized by the rhythmically dancing flames and their pet sparks that shoot up and pop like fireworks, spraying against the night sky like refugees from the fire. These flaming candlewicks are the miniature fire, producing the same effect.
They clear the mind, organize my thoughts and prepare my mind for focusing on the writing task at hand. The hypnosis only serves to calm the windstorm inside my head, settling the miscellaneous dust and debris of peripheral ideas but leaving the ripe necessities suspended in mid-air where they’ll be plucked and explored in detail. Thoughts now ordered and ready to be explored, I settle back into the double-deep, soft green sofa. The color reminds me of spring softness – fresh and yet somehow muted, as if the volume of color hasn’t yet been turned up to full blast. The color simply whispers of peace and comfort, and the sofa is accented by equally muted pillows shaded of gold and green. Nature patterns on the pillows bring the outside inside, and gives an aura of being in nature, even though I am suspended on the second story my tree house.
The paintings on parchment colored walls differ, though. Far from being patterns and colors found in nature, these boldly colored dancers radiate drama. Bold reds, oranges, blues and purples swim on canvas as the men and women dance a sultry Samba or the vivid Tango. There is spice and heat between dancers, and I am just peeking in on the show: dark wooden frames seem more like windows or lenses of a camera, and I am invited to peek into their private dances, invited to watch the raw grace and sexual attraction between the couples. Though my house is silent and quiet, when I look at the paintings, I can feel the breeze ruffle my hair and hot summer air on my naked back. Music permeates that summer air, mixing with it and becoming one so that the beat becomes me; I become the beat. I breathe it in, and exhale music back into the air, fueling the dancers’ delight and passion. They are dancing freely, moving their bodies with abandon of constraint, and I connect with them because I write with abandon of constraint. Just as their bodies flow freely, so do the words from my brain to my fingertips. I understand the dancers; they understand me. It’s a beautiful symbiosis, and they spur me on to further exploration. Sometimes I wonder who the artist’s muse was, because it seems that the woman’s writhing body is the same in every painting. Was she the artist’s lover? What does she look like now? Youth slips away so quickly, I have begun to notice whenever I look into a mirror, but grace seems to last much longer. Is she someone’s grandmother now? I don’t know.
My mind wanders away from the task at hand. But the conscious mind can only explore so much, even when the unconscious is at the helm. The “rational”, conscious mind seems to act as a filter, siphoning out all of the thoughts and ideas that may be nonsensical or uncomfortable. Sometimes that filter sensors what I really mean when I am trying like hell to get to the heart of something, scraping away layers of superfluous detail in an attempt to get at the truth of the matter. It seems to me that these matters only clarify themselves in the middle of the night, when the business side of my brain is asleep, leaving the naughty child of unconscious to run rampant. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night by a thought that slaps me on the inside of my head.
In the darkness of my nighttime room, comfort and function avail themselves to me. Foster is asleep nudged up against my legs so that I can only roll to one side – this happens every night, so I wonder why I am perennially surprised that the right side of my body is stiff every morning. Sometimes I nudge his furry black butt over, but tonight I think I’ll just curl up around him and breathe in his scent.
There, on the right side sits my lamp atop a beautiful oak nightstand, and I slide my hand down the cool, slim cord to find the switch to turn it on, bathing my bedroom in a soft, orangey glow. Some nights the light seems romantic; on other nights, it seems garish and a little spooky, depending on what type of thought or dream has yanked me out of oblivion. Regardless, an idea has knocked me conscious. Next to the orangey, glowing lamp is an old, ugly mug filled to the point of bursting with pens and pencils. Though the mug is what I would think of as ‘ugly’, it holds a plethora of memories. It’s the mug I received upon my high school graduation, and on it there is a list of the names of all of my classmates. Some have moved away, been lost in the shuffle, and some have died too early. Because of these memories, and these people who have put a thumbprint on my life, I keep the mug as a vigil there at my bedside, sometimes gliding sleepy fingers over their names. When I do, memories flood back in waves of sadness or laughter, depending on the memory that pops up. That mug holds a prominent place, regardless of its looks. The white mug with ornate blue writing means something to me, and it holds the pens and pencils, the tools of my passion. It has earned its place close to me. It will be there until the end – whatever end that may be.
I prefer pencil, but in the middle of the night my hand closes around whatever writing utensil it finds. My hand is not picky when it is tired. Next to the pen of pencils (that’s a pun if you please), lies a stack of small notebooks, Post-It pads, and index cards among contact solution, eyeglasses, a water bottle, lip balm, another set of candles, and brown sugar & fig lotion – more comfort items that keep me from having to get out of bed during the night. Everything that sits there, waiting for me on this nightstand, is there for a purpose. The type of clutter and disarray in my room may seem somewhat disquieting to the untrained eye, but everything is in place for me. During the day the objects sit quietly, unobtrusively basking in the sunlight. But at night, when I lie in my bed, vainly attempting to quiet the noise in my head, they watch me, comforting me to sleep. At night, everything is perfectly placed for me to reach it, keeping me from the inconvenience of having to move, possibly scaring my thoughts back into their hiding places.
Even this bed has been tailored around my needs: three blankets cover the electric one so that when I slip between the covers, I am immediately cocooned in a mini oven. The top cover is dark green fleece – washable and dog proof. This is important stuff, because comfort is of the utmost importance to a sleeping writer.
Why? I find that the ideas that deem themselves important enough to wake the conscious mind are worth writing down, and they are like a precious gift to myself when I wake up in the morning, stretch, and look over to my nightstand only to see my own handwriting smiling back at me with the knowledge that they behold something magical, something from my unconscious, untamed mind. These ideas are free from restraint, written in a semi-conscious and unfiltered state. In fact, some of the best ideas I have had began with a note left to myself in the middle of the night, surrounded by darkness and written in a child-like scrawl.
It doesn’t matter, though, if the handwriting of my unconscious self looks childish. I wake up in the morning, put on my white, fluffy, impossibly soft robe that swishes around my ankles as I stumble into the ceramic-tile floored kitchen to start the coffee brewing. It seems as though the fairy dust that covered my eyes and invaded my thoughts, dousing them with magic as I slept, left some remnants in my eyes in the morning. It seems that the romance of dreams, and the thoughts that wake me from sleep leave their mark on me, clinging to the back of my impossibly soft robe first thing in the morning. If I close my eyes and breathe in the scent of the coffee while it bubbles and brews, I can imagine the sparkling fairy dust of my dreams inching its way to my brain, stirring up old thoughts that have been left over from the night. Sometimes they make it to their destination, tickling thoughts back to the forefront of my mind; other times, I sit at my kitchen table, swinging my feet, brushing my legs against my luxurious robe, frustrated that these brilliant thoughts have escaped, leaving me trying in vain to sweep up the scattered sparkly remnants.
So goes everything, I tell myself, waiting for the frustration to pass. It seems that the moment you stop hunting for something is just the moment when it decides to cross your path, circling back into your arms. So the less I worry about the brilliance of last night’s ideas, the sooner they’ll come back to me in one form or another. The transience of my world is sharp; it shimmers around me like I am walking through a dream. So what remains? What is permanent? I don’t have an answer, but the thought of that both frightens and excites me. I am afraid to lose these thoughts, afraid to lose the momentum of writing when I am holding onto an idea so tightly. But these are minor losses, and as I glance down at Foster, I wonder when a true loss might throw this transience into perspective. I shudder, and hope against the odds that I never lose him. But for now I brush that thought away, as his freshly-ruffled fur floats suspended in mid-air, and focus on the sparkling remnants of dreams, working vainly to flesh them out before they evaporate.
When the sparkles fade away, melting into the glowing morning air, I shrug, hoping that perhaps they’ll visit me again the next night. Until then, I start all over again in my place of solitude and comfort, knowing that my thoughts are kept safe, here in my tree house, with Foster sleeping by my side as I write.