The sitting room used to be black shot through with silver glitter. I would settle by the fire, wine and spliff, music playing and feel as if I was cocooned in a coal mine or spinning through stars, everyone said it would feel dark but it didn’t, it felt as if there were no walls. Some movie people came and shot a film and asked if they could redecorate, they promised to restore it to how it was but I said no, the black depth was over, it was time for a change and about that time I got sober. No more nights staring into the flames repeating scenes in my head of how things ought to be, chasing feelings of love, chasing feeling. But that room I don’t sit in either, the sitting room is become a walk-through to my office now that nights are spent eating and going to bed, watching movies from under the duvet. I haven’t lit the fire in a long while. There are connections, aren’t there, to old habits, the fear and the memory of the slices of pleasure, the deep dive into lost worlds and fantasy, the total shut off from this place where I live now that lighting the fire, turning on lamps, cosying up in my old armchair will bring back. Like music. For the first few years of not drinking anymore I couldn’t listen to any, it reminded too strong, it made me want to close the shutters and open a bottle and roll a spliff and settle down to hours of drinking and writing inevitably followed by passing out in front of the tv. That was my poison, those closed off afternoons, me and my ocean of feelings, plunging depths, building imaginary lives, mine and others, a sense of meaning for a few precious hours, the idea of being someone. The sitting room is white now, the movie people restored order with a lick of their paint. Paintings are hung, the miniature tapestry above the fire place, Dionysus carved into a piece of found slate in the alcove, the sideboard is propped with photographs, sketches of when we were young, porcelain spoons made by my niece, a nail that fell out of me, another that was pulled, a gold Ginkgo Biloba leaf that symbolises this growth sustained. I need to write about that room. I need to sit in it and let the memories flood. I will do it tomorrow.
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Ah. Old habits !!!
This is beautiful.