I diligently cleared out my favourite corner of our shared bedroom, dragged in a tiny plastic writing table - the only one my twelve year-old muscles could safely carry - and an old beanbag facing the window, and called it mine. The carefully selected corner was graced with an uninspiring view of the backyard fence and a small section of lawn, much to the confusion of anyone who must've suspected what I was doing (possibly my sister, certainly not my parents), but it was also the second-last corner in the house to capture the sunset before lights out. Admiring the blood orange splashing across my bedroom walls was like witnessing a beautiful murder.
I never wrote a single word there. Kept it fastidiously neat for years - and then, the little table was moved out, the beanbag was thrown away, and my new bed was backed right up against the windowsill. (It would later become the backdrop to a summer memory - legs propped up against the glass, the smell of freshly-cut grass and morning dew tangling between my toes, and my ear pressed against the cold metal of the phone, sleepily listening to his calloused fingers strumming the chords of the saddest Paramore song.)
I'm sitting here now, in a master bedroom that opens onto a spacious balcony with a view of the sun setting behind the canopies of tropical trees, beside a cold cup of apple and pomegranate tea, remembering that first, unused writing desk. Fire-engine red and decorated with crayon scribbles, courtesy of my younger siblings, so that if you applied too much pressure the underside of your paper was polluted with purple and green wax demarcations.
Last weekend was tough. I had prematurely ended a - let's say, unsavoury - date. But my resentment about it grew like a tumour. So in a moment of weakness I skipped out of class, bought the most expensive sweetened iced drink money could buy (iced chocolate with an extra syrup shot, two scoops of vanilla ice cream, topped with whipped cream / $8), and hopped on the bus to the nearest furniture store.
'Excuse me, but how much does this cost?' It was a simple, no-frills, white computer desk. It was $135, but a thrifty $25 extra for delivery, which - the shop assistant then must've scanned my frame with x-ray vision, weighed up my body composition and mentally calculated my lean muscle mass to body fat ratio - I would most definitely need. I thanked her, made an off-hand comment about browsing around, then promptly exited the store.
The motivation was sheer desperation for emotional - and thus, creative - release, but in the end abandoning the impulse buy was probably a good thing. I'm not sure it would've helped.
The realisation that perfect views of apricot skies, new computer desks and fruit-flavoured teas have done little in staving off writer's block is moderately depressing, and not only to me. I hear twelve-year-old me sigh with resignation, from somewhere inside. She wants to know whether her meticulously maintained corner was for nothing. I'm not sure what to admit to her, that perhaps we aren't artists with a capital A, that we don't deserve special spaces.
Having said that, a friend of mine wrestled with the same frustration today. I read his prose in class, my fingers ready to switch to the histology slides in the case of perusing tutors, and listened with an empathetic ear to his struggles with 'the block'.
So, to Leo, to whom I suggested a change of scenery and thereby debunking all theories regarding expensive desks and sunsets - this is a token of my gratitude, for your writing, and for sharing my little grievances. To my twelve-year-old self - sorry, we aren't artists with an elaborate, cursive A. Perhaps just artists, with a lowercase but nonetheless expressive a. We should try a change of scenery next weekend.
PS. To everyone else - I hope this explains the lack of goss. Rest assured, there are some bits and pieces waiting in the wings (though not necessarily tasty bits, so we'll see how overprotective I'm feeling about letting them fly).
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