So peo­ple stay­ing with us have moved out and the house now feels MUCH too big instead of just too big. I’m wish­ing there would be more on one floor/less open space at the minute, because it’s cold and I have to walk fur­ther to the book­shelf down­stairs and because I’m here rarely enough dur­ing times when other peo­ple are that I’m not con­cerned about the noise of prox­im­ity at present. Even when I am, we’re in the same room and noise wouldn’t be sig­nif­i­cantly impacted. Part of an ongo­ing dis­sat­is­fac­tion with every­thing, I think.

I’d love some­where smaller with car­pets and solid walls painted twenty years ago in some incon­ceiv­able colour (as in, how could they have pos­si­bly thought that attrac­tive?) and no need for stairs (unless it were a ter­race, in which case stairs are per­mis­si­ble) and with no space for com­put­ers (I’d have to sell this thing and get a lap­top instead) but room enough for one big desk — not in my room so I couldn’t put ran­dom existing-paraphenalia upon it (deodor­ant cans, clothes, ran­dom paper, keys, wal­let, cam­eras) or the chair beneath it. The desk would have room at the back for an assort­ment of books within ready reach, but not imped­ing upon the work­space. I sup­pose that would make it about 115cm (45 inches) deep… it must also be wide enough for a lap­top at one end that I could com­fort­ably push out of the way.

A sun room would be excel­lent. One of those things you find in flats that’s com­pletely use­less for pretty much every­thing, but for the stor­age of books at one end of and read­ing in. West-facing, prefer­ably, so one could enjoy a book in the win­ter after­noon sun after the room has reached a com­fort­able tem­per­a­ture over the course of the day. I may regret that deci­sion in sum­mer, but there are always cur­tains (or rolling shades; not blinds, they are too clinical).

The bed­room would be small with a sep­a­rate wardrobe (the wardrobe itself is merely the object of nos­tal­gia), such that there remained fairly lit­tle space – on the walls, espe­cially. I have never had time for cul­ti­vat­ing char­ac­ter in one’s bed­room — it always appears messy but I can­not com­mit to plac­ing any­thing upon the walls. I will place a cal­en­dar there, duti­fully, every year… and then for­get to turn the pages. At present I am enjoy­ing Leu­nig — I sup­pose I could arbitar­ily turn months to look at the pic­tures, as it is not as though the thing gets very much use. I live in the room next door for organ­i­sa­tion (yes, IT) though the hand­held now resides in my bed­room — I inten­tion­ally have wire­less dis­abled to keep it out. My room is a haven for chaotic read­ing, hur­ried — but immensely enjoy­able — aca­d­e­mic con­sump­tion. Why I fail to spend more time in there is a mys­tery, prob­a­bly in some way related to mess of clothes and so forth. Par­tially a rug instead of car­pet, which means the chair gets stuck. Par­tially the chair being on wheels instead of fixed. Par­tially the desk being cov­ered in afore­men­tioned items (can you have fore­men­tioned items, mean­ing items to be men­tioned in the hypo­thet­i­cal future? I refuse to believe aforementioned/forementioned can be syn­onyms). The actual rea­son why is a mys­tery cloaked in my own propen­sity to sit here and blog instead of just sit­ting down and get­ting things done.

One day, you see, I’m going to quit this web gig and unin­stall my five browsers (well, four of them) and MSN and feed reader and email client and remove my net­work card and then start pay­ing the uni­ver­sity $2 a month for dialup and not bother to renew my domain name and stop check­ing my Gmail account and just use my uni email address (which I will check using the web inter­face tool, and have “Sent using Horde/IMP” appended to all my out­go­ing mes­sages). Then, I’ll get rid of the mobile, and pos­si­bly my desk­top com­puter. I’ll sit qui­etly read­ing books, papers, essays, and maybe even write some­thing use­ful after a while.

Then I’ll dis­cover that all I have done is trans­fer my focus, when I find myself growl­ing at ridicu­lous ideas and writ­ing angry let­ters, beam­ing hugely at char­ac­ter­ful irreg­u­lar­i­ties in works con­sis­tent with that in oth­ers and begin­ning to take advan­tage of the postal ser­vice. Then, the extent of the prob­lem will be truly known, when even the human­i­ties remain dis­tinctly inhu­man and detached.

Can’t I get any­thing right?