We’re doing this a lit­tle dif­fer­ently tonight.

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I decided that I don’t spend enough time in my liv­ing room. I’m always at the com­puter in the cor­ner of the bed­room. It’s my crawl­space, my cozy nook, thanks to the dark­ness and a decent set of speak­ers. Then I go to sleep on the couch in the liv­ing room.

But I used to spend nights writ­ing in this liv­ing room. Usually on the ground with my back to a patch of wall between the win­dow (open, of course) and the back door. Or with a mug of tea at the din­ing table. Nights full of warmth, and emo­tion, and clar­ity. I miss that. Back when I could still write about love. Back when I had love to write about.

But I’m here now in my blan­kets with my lap­top. On the TV is The Brown Bunny in all it’s grainy old-school glory, and Vincent Gallo, that sexy moth­er­fucker. I wish I could be as cocky. The sec­ond time through the movie you real­ize that all the girls are named after flowers.

Sunday night feels like it’s been alter­nat­ing between snow and rain all week­end. As per tra­di­tion, I’m see­ing how long I can go with­out turn­ing on the fur­nace before it gets too cold. I’ve never minded the chill; it only makes blan­kets and hood­ies all the more com­fort­able. My cat tends to be a lot more cud­dlier too, and aggres­sive even, in where she plants her­self next to me.

I’ve been wait­ing for the snow to come. Even with the has­sle and the mess and the bit­ing cold, it’s still worth it to wake up to a white world.

 

I’ve been drawn to pho­tog­ra­phy again. With video, an impor­tant moment can be eas­ily lost, but with pho­tog­ra­phy the viewer has no choice but to con­front the sin­gle frame pre­sented to them. There’s also some­thing about a lack of con­text. A pho­to­graph is more con­ducive to let­ting an audi­ence won­der what has hap­pened to lead up to the image, and what hap­pened after.

The prob­lem is that I don’t have any­thing to pho­to­graph any­more. I feel so unin­spired. I never go out. Sometimes I won­der if I’m get­ting more and more anti-social. I work from home for four days a week now. Every time I think I should pick up the phone and call some­one to catch up, I never do.

I’m start­ing to feel less and less guilty about it. I can’t tell if I’m get­ting com­fort­able, or just lazy.