Saturday, October 8, 2005
I am at my father’s house, in the room that I use as a bedroom when I am here. The sun is pouring in the window, glancing off a sidewall and hitting everything with its indirect light. The room looks like the very start of the day and is early morning bright.
This room is not bright on its own. It has walls that look white, but they are the darkest shade of white my father would let my sister use. The bedding is an only slightly darker color that I could name if I knew the names of colors that are as many as there are numbers. It is the color of white when it is dirty from an earthy dust. Sometimes I think it looks dirty, but not mostly, and when the sun is shining, I think they look white, only warmer. There are some light colored woods, a couple picture frames, a desk and two shelves, suspended on the wall. It is as you would find in a hot climate, with decorations that seem like they are conserving themselves, making use of negative space that is filled with hot air.
The decorations are almost entirely African: two tall, elegant dark wood figures, their elongated mahogany bodies graced with colorful golden beadwork. They used stand on two sides of a long wall, each on a tiny wooden shelf that clings to the corners by an unseen mechanism, but I put together. Separately they were too tall, skinny and plain to take up their space, but together they are striking, beautiful and in their one corner they make the whole room beautiful. The other corner now contains a pot patterned only by two colors in large plains, a rich fiery red and a darkest grey.
Next to it hangs a picture of an undetailed face painted with only black paint on a paper that looks tea stained. It is a wild looking face with one side entirely black from shadow and the other side mostly covered by dark and wild hair. It could be ominous, but it isn’t; it is the face of my father, painted by my mother. My father had a wild and crazy beard for the first seventeen and one half years of my life, and from old pictures I now realize that his hair was always as wild and silly as my father.
Next to that is a photograph of my mother with four little black boys. In the background is one of the worst examples of poverty I have ever seen. It was taken near the end of my grade three year; my whole family went on a trip to South Africa, but my mother’s ticket was paid for by the Alberta government on a grant for her to do research to write a book, which she wrote. This picture was taken after the family had gone home and my mother was doing whatever writers do to help them write books.
Underneath that is a hook for a picture that is leaned up against the wall on the floor. I think I know what picture it is (the one of the trees that look like birch trees in the golden dry grass) but I can’t tell because it is facing the wall.
The opposing wall has two shelves that contain more objects with a history of their own as well as childhood memories for me, except for one green stone face that I don’t know where it came from, how long we have had it, or whether it is African. It doesn’t match the room. It also has a dark wooden dresser toped by a grey pot full of tiny dried flowers. Wild, thick dead grass topped by many grey flowers with spiky petals that are too small to be measured by comparison to any common object.
This description threatens to suggest that the room is cluttered by decoration, but there are just enough to make one think that the empty space is full of African air, even if the sky outside looks like one that is made of blue ice, ready to drop snow on a fading fall.
I am in this room, and I am being here, but more so I am writing here. I am actively engaged in writing and I am now writing myself in. I should make my character doing something different from what I am doing; wouldn’t it be funny if I wrote myself in saying, ‘I am in this room, and I am taking delight in doing nothing, in letting mind go free’ or even, ‘I am concentrating on the light moving across the walls around the room as the fall sun, to lazy to climb too high, wanders, strolls, lazes with its hands in its pockets across the sky. As if looking at the ground, not straying too far from the horizon as it watches the fall leaves pass underneath.’ Now how could I be doing that if I am writing?
This room is not bright on its own. It has walls that look white, but they are the darkest shade of white my father would let my sister use. The bedding is an only slightly darker color that I could name if I knew the names of colors that are as many as there are numbers. It is the color of white when it is dirty from an earthy dust. Sometimes I think it looks dirty, but not mostly, and when the sun is shining, I think they look white, only warmer. There are some light colored woods, a couple picture frames, a desk and two shelves, suspended on the wall. It is as you would find in a hot climate, with decorations that seem like they are conserving themselves, making use of negative space that is filled with hot air.
The decorations are almost entirely African: two tall, elegant dark wood figures, their elongated mahogany bodies graced with colorful golden beadwork. They used stand on two sides of a long wall, each on a tiny wooden shelf that clings to the corners by an unseen mechanism, but I put together. Separately they were too tall, skinny and plain to take up their space, but together they are striking, beautiful and in their one corner they make the whole room beautiful. The other corner now contains a pot patterned only by two colors in large plains, a rich fiery red and a darkest grey.
Next to it hangs a picture of an undetailed face painted with only black paint on a paper that looks tea stained. It is a wild looking face with one side entirely black from shadow and the other side mostly covered by dark and wild hair. It could be ominous, but it isn’t; it is the face of my father, painted by my mother. My father had a wild and crazy beard for the first seventeen and one half years of my life, and from old pictures I now realize that his hair was always as wild and silly as my father.
Next to that is a photograph of my mother with four little black boys. In the background is one of the worst examples of poverty I have ever seen. It was taken near the end of my grade three year; my whole family went on a trip to South Africa, but my mother’s ticket was paid for by the Alberta government on a grant for her to do research to write a book, which she wrote. This picture was taken after the family had gone home and my mother was doing whatever writers do to help them write books.
Underneath that is a hook for a picture that is leaned up against the wall on the floor. I think I know what picture it is (the one of the trees that look like birch trees in the golden dry grass) but I can’t tell because it is facing the wall.
The opposing wall has two shelves that contain more objects with a history of their own as well as childhood memories for me, except for one green stone face that I don’t know where it came from, how long we have had it, or whether it is African. It doesn’t match the room. It also has a dark wooden dresser toped by a grey pot full of tiny dried flowers. Wild, thick dead grass topped by many grey flowers with spiky petals that are too small to be measured by comparison to any common object.
This description threatens to suggest that the room is cluttered by decoration, but there are just enough to make one think that the empty space is full of African air, even if the sky outside looks like one that is made of blue ice, ready to drop snow on a fading fall.
I am in this room, and I am being here, but more so I am writing here. I am actively engaged in writing and I am now writing myself in. I should make my character doing something different from what I am doing; wouldn’t it be funny if I wrote myself in saying, ‘I am in this room, and I am taking delight in doing nothing, in letting mind go free’ or even, ‘I am concentrating on the light moving across the walls around the room as the fall sun, to lazy to climb too high, wanders, strolls, lazes with its hands in its pockets across the sky. As if looking at the ground, not straying too far from the horizon as it watches the fall leaves pass underneath.’ Now how could I be doing that if I am writing?
posted by The Begger at 9:56 p.m.
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