I've been without a dedicated writing space for some time. There's a room to the front of the house that is all but ready for me; it's almost square, two metres wide by two metres-ish long. Painted white (a blank page cubed, if you will), it's in need of a floor and rendered unusable by ten years of accrued junk piled high around its walls.
In the meantime I scratch out corners and surfaces for myself throughout the rest of the house. On the bed, in the living room (only one corner does the job), in the back room.
All these areas work in their way but I realised this evening that I enter them with quite an obsessive compulsion to remould before uncapping my pen. I don't doubt it started with necessary tidying, decluttering or lighting, but it has become quite an angry ritual and it's driving S up the wall.
For instance, in the bedroom, I start by removing the blinds from the windows. The windows aren't big enough to start with so I'm convinced that an extra few inches of light at the top makes all the difference. The only space to work is on the bed, which has to be tidied, made, smoothed, pyjamas hidden from view. If the bed creases in a less than satisfactory way when I sit on it, I have to start again. Pillows are plumped, bedside tables ordered. For the record, when I'm not writing in there we almost never make the bed. The usual pile of clothes on the chest at the end gets shoved onto the floor. This last action might seem less than compulsive but there's an element of film set logic - if I can't see something it doesn't exist; plus the drama of sweeping several bundles of clothes from the surface is a small satisfaction.
The worst thing though is the sense of irritation that accompanies this tidying. As I'm doing it there's quite an extreme resentment of any objects even slightly out of place or alien to the space. This is accompanied by banging and grunting and tutting and sighing. Understandably S occasionally takes this personally. Hrrrnff - what are you even doing in the same room, woman?
Although unhealthy it is somehow satisfying, but will likely become less so if I drive S to the madhouse.
Speed on my Kubrickian cube.