Sunday, April 16, 2006

Chairs Enough

Strangely enough, I've been writing in the Florida room lately. I'd never heard of a Fla. room until my brother and his family threw down a mortgage on a place in East Detroit ten years ago. The house had a glass-enclosed room on the south end of the house. High sun exposure. A soft urban breeze. They called it a Florida room. And that was that. I stayed in that room when I visited on the weekends away from Saginaw.

Now, in the place we've called home since November, we have a comparable room. Lately it has been warm enough to set up a makeshift workspace in t/here, and over the last few days, it's been not-too-hard-not-too-soft writing environ of goodly inspiration. I've never before been conscious of an oversensitivity to writing spaces. Thought I was above it, immune, able to write here, there, anywhere, in other words, no matter the circumstances. But whereas the official office and living room (both adequate for working, with decent furniture, lighting, etc.) have been fine for reading lately, they're traps for writing. Snares! I don't want to overemphasize the consequences of space for what I perceived to be a brief and now-passing writing rut--a moment of dread at the immanence of semester's end. Might've been the full moon for all I know. But a change of scene has done something; I've vacated the stifling writing sites, replacing them with this one: an over-sunshined porch with a card table and enough folding chairs to host a small party. Headphones leveled up with entrancing techno loops from AfterhoursDJs.org. I hope not to jinx myself by saying it, but I've been pleasantly surprised by the difference brought on by simply changing scenes.

Posted by Derek Mueller at April 16, 2006 6:00 PM to Rhetorico-Geography