I feel a dark, languid energy.
2 pm and the garden smells of monsoon. Wet earth, leaves. I face a dark window. The field outside is unlit, but I can smell it. And hear it, alive with crickets, the stray dogs, a stray bird awoken suddenly from peaceful sleep. There's the soft glow of my fathers' old reading lamp. What a reading lamp. This is the kind of lamp that keeps you company through the night. Tall, bends this way and that, wherever you want light, it shines it. It must be 50 years old. I am keeping it forever, never giving it back.
The sound of tapping is addictive, smooth. It keeps itself going. Like when I run and the sight of my feet moving is sometimes the only thing that keeps them moving. Or when you wear heels, and you see their long tapering shadow. No amount of screaming pain in my calves is enough to make me stop creating those shadows. Lovely things.
On my screen, a PhD chapter. Almost done. Slowly, slowly. I have to read the lot and then send it to my supervisor. I am aiming for pre-dawn. In the background, there's Carrie Bradshaw and Belle De Jour. Tortured, sexy, writers. When my tapping stops, theirs fills in the spaces. And writing always turns me on. My lovely fictional friends here would understand that, I think.
The slow and steady sensuality of the sounds outside, the tapping keys, the click of thoughts, the mild pain in your muscles. The restlessness. The sense of movement, of flowing. When I finish this thesis I want to rip someone's clothes off. Until then, I have my lamp, and my writer-friends and the dark night outside.
(An Edit: Writing this far from the Man, I am, as always Paranoid. Note to the Universe: When I said 'someone', I wish you to make it The Man. And when I say I'd like to wait until the thesis is done, please, Lord, no, I did not mean that. Thanks. Back to work.)
