| Lying on my bed one night, crosswise. Legs sticking
over one edge, top dangling off the other. I let
my head drop all the way back, letting the weight do
the work, stretching, blood in my ears. Uuaaaaaah.
And these walls drive me beserk.
The palest shade of green, I can barely tell they're
colored, only the ceiling is white and that's my
frame of reference. Just this
expanse of blankness. It's more disturbing upside
down than right side up, I don't know why that is.
Or maybe I've never been as conscious of the way it
leeches the color away from everything else. Maybe
I'm just looking at things differently.
The flourescent bulb glares, it's so white my head
starts to hurt, and there's no question it's the
light causing pain, and not the way my head is hanging
upside down. No question. It's the brightness, the
glare, the blank walls, and cold, clinical possiblities.
When we were 18 and studying away from home, one of
our classrooms was downstairs in a refurbished
basement. Cinderblocks painted white, and no windows,
and we'd go crazy, day after day, nowhere to focus but
the teacher and blankness. We chatted up the janitors,
found where they hid the paint, stayed late one day.
Four walls - blocks of primary colors on one, mountains
and sun and green on another, quotes and wisdoms on the
third, and the back wall, we left that blank for the
teacher.
If it wasn't 1:00 at night, if I knew my landlord had
any paint, anything but this emptiness, if I
could get myself off this bed, I'd have the whole
room in a rich shade of red, a deep shade of blue,
a splash of color, a cloak instead of
this blinding, glaring nothingness.
| 
