I choose my room with the utmost care

I choose my room with the utmost care. The things that are in my room at a given time are too entwined with my state of mind to be ‘chosen’: things appear and disappear in a diurnal rising and falling of thought. A perfectly formed and furnished room can be an extension of the mind and oneself. And like one’s varied states of mind; the multitudes one seems to contain, my room is likewise made up by a collection of distinct and separate areas.

I will show you around as things lie now:

The room itself I chose carefully. A long, narrow room with an enclave. The paint is rough, the carpet is thick, and probably the source of the musty smell. There is a small north facing window that frames a square of sky and a flat ridge of brown hills. A winter room for a winter city. In the dark corner of the year, day never reaches this space and the window is a quadrant of cold light. It seems that the arctic must be just over the horizon. 

Opposite the door there is a table. On it is an empty wine bottle with a bunch of dried flowers in. The flowers I dried over the summer: roses, lobelia, lavender: creased and wonderfully delicate. They are affable in the candlelight that comes from below, but I avoid looking at them in the day. The bottle was very good, a reminder of a less lonely night a year or two ago.

On the wall, behind the flowers, is postcard print of La Belle Jardiniere. My cousin gave it to me; the cousin who is in his seventh year in Florence becoming a Catholic priest. He wants to bring me over but I regret to say that I intend to become even less holy in the coming months. 

I usually have a few photos lying on the table. There is one of an old lover. It used to be in another part of the room – a now non-existent part. I look at that photo: I do not know her anymore and it seems impossible now that we ever shared those intimacies. It is a relic with only an aesthetic purpose. 

The spirit of music finds itself a place here too, but in range of sentiments and speeds. There is a record player underneath the window for the considered spirit of music. Included in the collection, a record of Dylan: Time out of Mind, a record of Davis: Birth of the Cool. Some classical too: the warhorse that is Brahms’ piano concerto in B flat major, and Vaughan Williams’ diaphanous Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis. Sitting next to the record player, in contrast, is some Pioneer equipment. When a faster ‘spirit’ is in control it is used in fruitless attempts to mimic the sounds of the present.

There is a corner that plays host to restlessness and thoughts of travel. It is ironic, I suppose, that something as closed and mundane as a corner is used for this purpose. There’s a stool with two blankets folded neatly on it: one from Morocco, a gift from my sister, and one from Damascus which was passed down from my grandfather. My walking stick leans against the stool. It must have shrunk half a foot since I first found it, such is the quantity of miles we have covered. It’s been across most of the west of England on that solitary walking tour, over the mountains of Transylvania, and many places in between. There’s a picture of home too – a reminder that I am in some capacity ‘travelling’ now. The picture is of the façade of the house, taken in January. The house is bare and asleep, unconcerned abour the brutal winds. With that picture I can return in my mind to walk along the avenue and look down into the mead or onto high Windwhistle and its crowning mists.

I sit in the middle of the room at the principal desk. The second desk is behind me and so there is only a narrow gap in between. This area is chiefly concerned with the dilettante in me.

The surface of the desk behind me is everchanging and always chaotic: books, notes with poetic scribbles, newspaper articles, sheets of music from Bruch’s concerto etc. . All utterly incoherent pieces of the human condition. But in fleeting, exciting moments they can congregate in my mind and implore some fencing with the quill. Now as we look, Bukowski is front and centre. I think I was feeling thin in some capacity a few moments ago. There also is Durrell, Conrad, and the Oxford English verse open to page 494 – Burns. Yes, it is late January, quite right.

The principal desk is the middle of the room. I have pulled this desk around with me from place to place. I keep it empty, except when it is in use. Even the lamp is on a different surface. The wall above the desk however is not empty. Cohen looms ever watchful over it. They called him the master of romantic despair. We have spent a lot of time looking at each other when I have been weighed down by matters of the heart. But he is above the desk for a reason. There is a Café Pushkin sign. Perhaps this will not last the day. Pushkin himself – his poetry that is, is too orderly, too perfect, for my present requirements.

So there; I have offered to you a panorama in writing of this carefully formed space of mine. Though, note, after the short but non-negligible time it has taken to look around, I am compelled to go and change something. Perhaps, in some defiance of entropy, these disparate areas will one day be drawn together into one. It seems unlikely.

You can listen to a recording of this story at: Purple Radio Spotify

Illustrated by Talia Jacobs