WEEKLY WRITER’S PATH #19
I am sitting in my studio tonight, birds chatting outside as the sun sets in a stormy sky. The open door invites a fresh, cool breeze that flutters the frayed ends of silver duct tape peeling away from a gap in the window glass. It sways a white spider web, one thick thread, hanging from the ceiling that is punctured with three-inch nails. It plays with the edges of my old high school yearbook, the corners bitten away. The breeze lifts for a moment the lingering smell of dead mouse.
Yes, it’s my studio, but no, it’s not the downstairs corner office at the Lofts. It’s the shed out back of our house that has been the home of waterlogged boxes of kids’ art, the rototiller and various car seats and van benches pulled from unknown vehicles. Last week we began trolling through the 150 square feet of books and boxes to find a place for me to work, to write, to hear silence.
Because that is the most important part about having “a room of one’s own.” It’s the need for complete and utter silence. The lack of interruptions. The sense that you have all the time in the world to write. “Creating the illusion of the passage of time,” as my excellent high school writing teacher Dr. William Lally always said.
The wind picks up and howls through the trees, and the underbelly of a heavy cloud that covers the horizon is gilded as the sun sets, “just like your Magic cards,” Talaya says to her little brother. Asher props a frayed window blind in a huge box, the torn white fabric fluttering and snapping in the breeze. His flag. I can see him out the door, the sprawling juniper tree bissected by planks of wood as he climbs to the highest platform.
When we were kids, we had forts. My kids have forts. And now I want my own fort. A place where I can protect my stuff, keep everyone else out, test my secret gadgets, spy on the world.
