PhilPaine.com

I’m stretched out on the couch. At the oth­er end, sphinx-posed above my right foot is a cat — not mine, but a long term vis­i­tor. Next to the oth­er foot is my rab­bit Stampy. They are both star­ing at me, with that air of aris­to­crat­ic dis­dain that both have per­fect­ed. Cat own­ers are famil­iar with it, but they may be sur­prised that rab­bits can be just as proud. I’m not going to dis­turb them. I’m grate­ful for the calm. Nor­mal­ly they would be chas­ing each oth­er around the room.

I’m read­ing a nov­el, and lis­ten­ing to some choral music by Chris­tos Hatzis, who may be Canada’s answer to Arvo Pärt. A mug of hot choco­late (made prop­er­ly with cocoa, not some instant junk), cheese and crack­ers on the table beside me. Elec­tric lights have been dimmed and replaced with a small oil lamp, which emits a hint of ros­es from its scent­ed lamp oil.

So I can’t work up any anger over any polit­i­cal news. At the back of my mind, an idea for a new nov­el is start­ing to take form, so I’m not con­cen­trat­ing too strict­ly on the book. In fact, I should prob­a­bly set it aside and read it prop­er­ly lat­er, when my head is not drift­ing into my own fic­tion writ­ing. I do a lot of writ­ing in my head. Not from lazi­ness. My right wrist was severe­ly dam­aged many years ago (bro­ken in twen­ty places), and it is phys­i­cal­ly painful for me to spend too much time at a key­board. Those long stretch­es of work for clients, where I spend many hours fill­ing out data­bas­es on Excel tables, are real­ly hard on me. So I do as much writ­ing in my head as I can, before actu­al­ly sit­ting down to type. I’ll some­times have entire pages in my head, com­posed while walk­ing or rid­ing a bike, before they are put down, though that very process will gen­er­ate all sorts of errors, which have to be cleaned up on rewrite.

Things are improv­ing, finan­cial­ly, very very grad­u­al­ly. I’m deter­mined to trav­el next year, and I’m lay­ing the ground­work to do so.

Stampy sud­den­ly desires a Maria Bis­cuit. For some rea­son, he is obsessed with these tea bis­cuits, import­ed from Spain. He would rather eat them than car­rots. He jumps on my chest, push­es his face under­neath my book and into mine, and pulls at the frame of my glass­es with his teeth. This is his method of issu­ing a non-nego­tiable demand. I’ve always sus­pect­ed that Stampy has trained in spe­cial camps in Afghanistan, or Wis­con­sin, or wher­ev­er rab­bit ter­ror­ists do it.

I cave in to ter­ror­ism. The Maria bis­cuits are kept in a brown cook­ie jar which is with­in reach. The music has shift­ed to Hatzis’ Foot­prints In New Snow, which incor­po­rates that pecu­liar form of Innu­it throat-singing where two women sing direct­ly into each oth­ers’ mouths. The atmos­phere in the room has changed from serene to spooky. The oil lamp, burn­ing down to a short wick, is flick­er­ing, and throw­ing unsta­ble shad­ows on the wall. I have a flash of mem­o­ry or a lone­ly evening on top of a moun­tain in north­ern Que­bec, at the back of the north wind, besieged by cold shiv­ers and thoughts of Wendigo.

The lamp goes out. The cat and the rab­bit dis­ap­pear, off to the bed­room for some secret game. The room has grown dark. I hear voic­es laugh­ing in the street. Red LEDS on the com­put­er and audio equip­ment, burn like fireflies.

You can be in so many places, with­in one room.