[Sound recording, as an extra treat… with a couple of sound ‘typos’, unedited out…]
*
Every time I go up to my study I hear the sound of flies
They accumulate. They gather against the window sill.
They dance, in a frenzy. They never stop
I see them dead. Six or seven at a time. I collect them, one by one, grabbing them by their wings. Delicate. They look ugly and precious.
They die and they breed. There are always more to come.
I do not know how they enter my space. What holes. What little doors remain open. Inviting. Enticing. Welcoming.
I do not go up my study often.
It is a beautiful perfect room. Covered in art & crafts flowers, lit by art deco lamps, warmed by exposed floor boards.
I worked hard at this space. Many helped me. Moulding it, from unpromising origins, into the perfect room of one’s own.
But perfect things are always flawed.
The sun does not visit often
The door does not close
The flies own it more than I do
Darkness and buzzing. This is my room
Gloom and dances
Shade and insects
A dream gothic corner. To concoct twisted fantasies. To horde made-up memories. To sit down and squint, listening – intently – at the regular deaths. Seeking the oblique lights of yet another absent sunset. Guessing the errors in the walls – that bit of paper that does not fully fit the angle; that flower that was unfinished, unintendedly deformed by a lazy crafting hand.
This room has a strange disorienting power. Perfectly failing to offer what I think I need. Probably offering what I should seek.
I avoid it.
Fabulous paper cuts accumulate on the floor. They are full of beasts. Full of gold and of leaves and of goblins.
The old chest of drawers harbours inks and dry pens.
Ribbons overflow out of that frustrated piano seat, the one that has not been put to proper use in fifty years. From music throne to bow-making box – is this a dignified ending for servile furniture?
Photographs. Many photographs tip toe over the inclined ceilings. They talk to each other and to the golden papers, to the inks and the ribbons and the wall flowers.
Often alone, all of these objects, these desires, these ingredients in the perfect dream of a study, of my room, they pursue lives of their own. They are splendid. What a marvel to behold.
And the flies go on and on, following their own business. Breeding. Dancing. Kissing the windows. Dying. They enter through the room’s secret holes, they line up, they lick their little feet, they enjoy the dust and the quiet in this perfectly flawed room. They wait for me to visit. They tremble and go zzzzzzz zzzzzing into the frozen view, into the dirty glass, into the tiny blind window, under the stiff and beautifully unloved lampshade.
I’ll sit down and admire this musty sight. This study of mine. A study where no studying occurs. Where no work gets done. But where fantasy lives flourish. The lives of abandoned pretty things, animated only through the relentless, buzzing dance of endless tiny impertinent intruders.
Go keep breeding and dying. Go kiss my wasted dreams. Go reign in the room of one’s own that I have never owned. This room that is mine but only you, dear moscas, truly know.
*
