Tuesday, January 17, 2012

This is what comes of living in gothic solitude, after a time:

It is midnight, and I'm in that madwoman-in-the-attic space of Farfara the realtors called a "bonus room" (blech) but I sometimes call the Other Within in fits of anxious irony, an undefined, ignored subconscious of a vast upper-floor space tucked down a frigid corridor from the rest of the house. Maybe I should be calling it the Superego.

I was stationary-cycling away while reading a classicist's investigation of the origins of the phrase "Quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius" [Whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad], when my eye was caught by a long, undiscovered ledge running the length of the staircase.

"Ho ho!" I cried, scuttling over to it. (Need I add that the walls, if not quite wallpapered, are a very sickly yellow up there?) "You know what you're going to be used for, don't you, my fine friend? You're going to be a bookshelf! Just you wait, Henry Higgins...."

"Wait," I thought, suddenly self-conscious, "Are you having a conversation with a ledge?"

I hurried downstairs.