Icelandic Room.

Against a wall entirely made of windows, the silence is sharp. It is the type of quiet you would feel afraid to shatter. The occasional bleat of a cell phone, clicking of fingers on computer keys, the rustle of fabric (somebody is putting on their coat--bold!), or a pencil gritty atop paper slices through. The silence is intense; intimidating almost. It seems like if you were to drop something or take a bite of an apple or even cough, at least one person would glare at you.

And then there is this woman in heels. She is fifty-something with a smooth white bob. Her heels are leather (navy) and it seems like she is in charge. Not, like, in charge of making sure that everybody stays insanely quiet, but in charge of the books on the shelves, or making sure the plants get the perfect amount of light and water, or something like that. She walks through the room at least once every half hour or so. Her shoes are steely against the wooden floor and it is actually kind of nice because it pulls me out of this smoky writing haze that I am beginning to drown in. A simple reminder that there is an entire world outside of this goddamn project that is dragging me into itself. And so I like her, this woman with the heels.

February is the month of the ice moon. This year, is also the month of my champagne birthday! Yay yayayyyy. I have wanted to be 27 for a long time now, for some weird reason. I don't know why at all, but I have been aware for a few years now that it is going to be a special age for me. Maybe all good, or maybe the opposite?! I hope that it is a happy year.

Click, click click. Here she comes again, the keeper of the Icelandic Room. Light washes through the wall of cool million windows, all dusty luminous white. I sip my coffee, now cold, and reread what I've written for the hundredth fuckin time. It isn't good yet, but it also isn't bad. Okay, for now, is an okay place for it to be.

Cinnamon hearts.

Each time I sat down to try writing about it, the task become more impossible. Fingers grazing against the keyboard--my inability to keep them still only made me more and more frustrated. My eyes flicked everywhere--wandering; bored. The cat watched me silently, sensing my discontent, I guess. I painted my fingernails a pale jade and sipped a glass of ice water slowly; methodically. I arranged all the shoes (both of ours) in perfect symmetry, and then immediately messed them up again because they looked too weird; all orderly like that. I glared at the blank screen, luminous with the whitest white. Still I battled it. My mind was empty. I lit a few candles in the midday light--a dirty, pearly gray. I felt chilled; then way too hot. I slouched in and out of my boyfriend's thinnest plaid as my body temperature dipped all over the fucking spectrum. I fed the cat, then draped her across my chest. She licked my eyebrow and then my jaw. I tried writing one word, but it wouldn't come. I ate half a grapefruit and then made tea (earl gray), scorchingly hot with milk and brown sugar. It was a tawny colour that slid down my throat buttery-smooth. I took a bath in my tub with the bronze claw-feet and dumped a whole bunch of eucalyptus salts into the water so that maybe I could drug myself into some sort of state of relaxation. When I stepped out of the wet heat twenty minutes later, my hair was in a snarl and black mascara had snaked all the way down my face. This discouraged me--I don't know why but it did. I put on a record (some Bob Dylan thing) and glanced over at my computer sitting there on the low table and I felt like I wanted to smash it out the window. Instead, I put on some flip-flops and walked next door (twenty-five steps max) to the convenience store, I think it was called "Young Food Mart" but we called it "Lee Chong's", something that started after one of us re-read Salinger and then it just stuck. So I dipped over to Lee Chong's, through the strange sultry light of Indian summer. I wandered through the two aisles three, four, seven times. Something like that. I don't know; I lost track. By the time I was standing at the counter, the woman slouched behind it cracking her gum and playing Solitaire gave me a skeptical look. I bought diet Coke, black licorice, peppermint gum, tobasco sauce, cat food and a pack of Benson & Hedges Special Lights. I also bought a BlackJack ticket, for zero reason. I walked home slowly, like I was in the depths of a dream. The air was humid--cool; edible. A little boy and his (friend? brother?) blazed past me on BMX bikes that were too big for them, screaming that they are going to go build a fort. Back in the apartment, I poured black rum and some of the diet Coke into a teacup, and wandered through every room in our place once and then over again. My fingers traced the pale walls--kitchen, living room, dining room, bedroom, sunporch, hallway, bathroom. Laughter trailed through the skinny walls from the people living across from us . I sat cross-legged on the bed for a while, watching bars of cool afternoon light jut through the window. After a while, I started feeling drowsy so I got up and watered all the plants. Then I thought, hey maybe if I move the computer to a different place then I will feel some sort of inspiration. So I put it on the kitchen windowsill, but still I felt myself shrinking away and out of sight of it, so that the tightness in my chest would dissipate. I flipped through a magazine, folded the laundry (now cold; it had been sitting there for days), and rearranged the hallway closet. I thought that maybe I was going to cry; angry tears of course. If I couldn't even put down one single stupid word, then how would I be able to turn out a page, and then more strung along after that? Page after page of building this surreal path towards proving why I was good enough; smart enough; skilled and mature enough. I thought that maybe I was going to throw up, or at least kick a wall or something. Instead, I went to the kitchen sink and cupped a few handfuls, one after the other, of icy water and tossed them onto my face. I could feel that goddamn computer, staring at my backbone--down every curve of my spine and into my soul which was leaping with the flames of a thousand nerves. I didn't want to turn around...I thought that maybe I was going to tear that computer in half. I stood there, facing the sink; the eye-level cupboards; the few scattered dishes from breakfast strewn over the countertop. The cat twisted herself around my feet, bony as hell and shrieking for my attention. I picked her up with one hand; carefully and with calculation, so as not to align my body at all towards the computer. As she burrowed into my neck, I thought--this is crazy. This bitch of a computer is making me actually feel crazy. Very very slowly and lightly, I placed the cat down on the floor. I shot the last dregs of my teacup, and walked right over to that windowsill like I was preparing to kill some sort of prey. I stared down at the glossy screen, the pristine keyboard and I wanted nothing more than to walk away. I thought that maybe I was going to give up. Instead, I knelt my bare knees on the floor, and didn't move from the side of that window. I chipped away at the keys in slow-motion pace for the first while. I thought, this is so stupid. It almost physically hurt. I found myself typing a list; who the hell knows why but that is what came out.

apples
kale
yogurt
cinnamon
almonds
bread
granola
gin
dark chocolate
stationary
get new set of keys cut
pay phone bill
wake up earlier
find a new bicycle
read more
remember how lucky we are
don't take yourself too seriously

And on it went. After a list, it was a letter, and after that some sort of a journal entry. Next it became a mashup of memories and at some indistinguishable point, it transformed into what it needed to be. I chain-smoked while writing it. Who knows if it was any good at all; it might be absolute trash. By the time I peeled myself up off that floor, the bare bones of it were all there. I was finished, sort of. The kitchen was dark, like black-dark, and so was the rest of my home. I think that maybe it was well after midnight. I heard a key fumbling in the lock and like that, it was all over. I cared, but not really. A smile traced over my lips and in that instant my harrowing day seemed funny, almost. Only then did I walk away from it. I thought that maybe it didn't even really matter, even though I knew it did.