The problem I have with the present day is the sheer ugliness of the culture. I loathe so much of the vernacular architecture today, for instance. It's some kind of hideous legacy from the seventies: houses with no personality, just uninspired blocks of lumpy blandness. I would very much like to live in a house with classic proportions, to write in rooms with order and grace built in to the lines of the space, rather than putting up with peculiar ceiling heights and incomprehensible traffic patterns. I suspect the architects of non-Euclidian tendencies when I see the weird footprints of the houses in this area. Yes, this is one of my pet peeves. When I have enough money, I'll buy a house built to my specifications, and I shall specify Palladian proportions even if I can't manage to work in a portico or dozens of windows.

The cats would probably like the house less if it didn't have such delightful nooks and crannies in which to bat wadded up paper balls. Sometimes I get down on my stomach and look around, trying to see how a cat sees this place. A cat sees a lot of dust, that's for sure. Bug parts, ugh. Lots of bug parts pushed under the sofa and chairs. Plenty of excellent climbing material. Not many straightaways for those major tailwinds they both get late at night. No wonder there's a lot of scrabbling and toenail clicking whenever they start chasing each other. My dog sees this view, too, but somehow I can't imagine her being dissatisfied with a nice, large set of rooms. She's more into lying around than scampering, being a dog.

Me, too, really. I lie around in bed reading, or sit around in this room computering (yeah, yeah, that's not a real word). I'm as exciting as an inert gas when I'm online. I look around a lot when I'm writing, though, which is why it matters to me to have unusual things to stare at. I muse over two photographs I took in Iceland, a poster of Joel and the 'bots, an oversized map of Paris, a Tuxedo Sam clock, some Beanie Babies well-chewed by the cats, a ceramic pitcher with rhinos painted on it, a print of a famous Japanese woodcut, a blue Wedgwood dish, and about 1000 books. It's a small room. It's the old porch, now inexpertly enclosed, and it's always the wrong temperature for comfort but it's my study. The door doesn't hang true, the cats, the dog, and John wander in and out frequently, but it's where I do all my creative work. It's a room of my own, that incredibly important piece of domestic architecture without which I would go crazy.