Sitting home, Tuesday night

I can’t think of anything to write about. I’m just going to close my eyes for a minute and see what happens. It’s very strange when you close your eyes and type. It takes your brain a minute to relax and trust your hands to type accurately.

My brain is having a problem letting go at the moment. It keeps telling my eyes to open and check the spelling. I don’t like using the spell checker on the computer.

Write about what you know. Isn’t that what 'they' say. What do I know?

Several minutes pass. I am just sitting, listening to the sounds in the house. It is quiet, nobody else is making a sound. Bruce is at work. Marissa wafted out of the house thirty minutes ago on her boyfriend's arm in a floaty black strapless number. The boys downstairs are studying or out. The only sound is that of the laptop humming and the weather outside.

I love this time. In about thirty minutes, Bruce will come home and rustle around the house in his waterproof weather gear. He'll talk loudly to himself about his day. He shouts at himself when he's had a bad one, which is most days. It's quite unnerving. Then he'll bang pots and pans, rustle up a foul-smelling, fry up, open some beers and settle down to watch hockey or baseball or football. The sound of the television goes through my head like a car alarm. He tries to keep it down, he's good like that, but I am allergic to the hyperbole of the commentators. I don't like to complain too much. It's his house too.

But now it's fine. It's quiet except for the rain.

I am sitting in my bedroom. It is warm and dry. Too warm. I put the heat up earlier because the house was chilly when I got home. I should turn it down, but I am too comfortable sitting here with the laptop propped against my bent knees.

I have been reading Ian McEwan's Saturday, but its half-hearted attempt to be Herzog for New Labourites at the dawn of the twenty first century is depressing me, so I have left it to one side and am faffing.

It is raining steadily outside. The intermittent sound of water dripping over the lip of the blocked gutter above my window is adding to the sense of warmth and comfort inside. Every few seconds the wind hurls rain against the window, reminding me that I am sheltered from the storm. An undulating nor'easter, apparently a separate entity to the one playing with the rain, gusts through the trees in the garden once in a while. It makes me restless. I want to go outside and stand under them and listen, although it is too wet and dark to do so.

We have maples in our garden, and tall pine trees of some description. They darken the deck and the lawn and make the mornings dank and moist. But in the summertime they were really comforting in the sunlight, providing shade from the heat and the neighbours.

The garden stretches up a steep slope to the hill behind, upon which three houses are perched looking down at us. But I never feel overlooked, primarily because of the trees.

My room is smallish. Dark, despite the fact that I have two windows. The walls are a dark creamy yellow colour, like a faded tempura. My curtains are a burgundy lace attempt at something that Jill my landlady saw in a magazine. I have Roman blinds as well, to block out the eyes from the houses above. I use them now because the autumn darkness makes it necessary for me to switch the lights on when I come home.

I don’t use the overhead light. I hate its inefficiency, the way it just floods the room with light rather than direct it onto the work in hand. Instead, I use three lamps. A large golden-shaded antique monstrosity, a present from Jill, with an energy efficient bulb that does nothing for my eyesight, squats on my bedside table. It is far too big for the table or the room. A smaller modern desklight with a harsh glare that I use for work is my main source of light for reading and writing. I have turned the bulb upside down to bounce the light off the ceiling in an attempt to make it softer. It casts a deep shadow on the batik of Ganesh that hangs on the wall. I brought the batik with me from Ireland, rolled up in the bottom of my bag. A something to remind me of the home I abandoned for a new world. I have another smaller, mushroom-shaped sensor lamp positioned on the floor to light up the far corner and make interesting shapes on the wall. The room feels like a cave lit by firelight with this arrangement.

Bruce Chatwin would have interesting things to say about it if he were still alive.

I am lying on my bed. It is a large double bed, new and comfortable. Jill bought the bedding. A dark black and cream geometric pattern, with lots of pillows. I would never have chosen it myself. I prefer plain cream, with the pattern intrinsic to the material, not silk-screened onto rough cotton. I bought a cream throw the other day to cover it, but it’s too small. I don’t mind though, I quite like the pattern's masculinity. It gives the room shape, forces me to tidy up so the lines of wall and window and floorboard and bedding, the curves of lamp and handbag and jewellery box, are all able to stamp their presence in the room. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a Matisse painting. An early work, knifed onto the canvas in thick stripes from Jackson Pollack's colour palette.

The floor of my room is covered in a strawberry blonde wood. I love it. It glows softly in the light and is always warm to my feet. I love the feel of walking across it, the way my feet squeak softly when I turn. I never wear shoes in the room if I can help it.

There isn’t much furniture apart from my bed. The wardrobe is typically North American - a little chamber off the room. I keep the door open, so that the clothes inside will add colour to the space. All my bags and scarves and belts are piled on the door frame, the handle, the hooks. They clutter things a bit, but there’s no helping that. My books are piled on the floor. Despite my best efforts, and regular trips to the library, the pile is growing.

There is a 1950s tall boy, an elegant piece made of dark and creamy lacquered wood. Its top is covered in jars and pots and containers for make up and jewellery. They share the surface with a large framed photo of myself and Tracy, a gift from him.

The photo was taken by his brother. It’s a really good one, we’re in deep deep shadow, so all you can see clearly is the light bouncing off my hair and my cheek. You can hardly see him, his face is buried in my hair. But you can sense our smiles. We were at a party, on the night of a full moon when you could still stand outside and smell the sea.

As well as the tall boy, I have a small modern black computer desk, with a pull-out ledge for the keyboard that just gets in my way as I have a laptop. And finally, beside my bed, a little side table, upon which I have thrown one of my pashminas. The dark red one. To pick up the curtains. It too is piled with books, diaries, drawing pencils, and the deitrus of projects I’ve started and forgotten about.

This is my room. My most intimate world. This is where I spend most of my downtime. After I leave it, this room will stay burned into my memory forever, filed alongside all the other rooms in which I have sat alone over the last few years. Resurfacing when a particular emotion comes over me. I wonder whether or not I am spending too much time alone. I enjoy it most of the time. I read The L-shaped Room when I was very young and impressionable and the feeling of independence the author felt in her little garret stayed with me long after I forgot her name or her story.