The room I have been dreaming of for the last 15 years has one large table in the middle of it made of a light unvarnished wood. There are lots of bits of paper, relatively neatly piled and a laptop on it. Almost certainly when I was first dreaming of the room the computer would have been a large beige desktop, but as time has gone by it changed. I don’t remember at what point this happened, probably around the time I got my first laptop which was around the same time that the L of its profile became the default shape of a computer. Otherwise everything else in the room has remained the same since I first dreamt of it.
Behind the desk is a large window spreading the entire aspect of the wall save for two columns at either end that house the frame. The frame itself fits three square panes of glass that sit below three smaller rectangular ones that open outwards to allow in a breeze. The window sits on a deep sill about three feet from the ground that has become a home to an assorted collection of books and plants. This is the only part of the room that hasn’t been successfully defended against chaos. Some of the plants are desperate for water and their leaves are starting to brown at the tips; even in my dream I am a bad gardener and I suspect that being exposed to direct sunlight is not helping them. Some of the books are still standing upright, but most have now fallen flat on to their cover. The spines have also been damaged by the sun; those that were red are now orange, others have had their title almost completely erased.
Opposite the window, in the right corner as you enter, is the door. The two walls adjacent to it are plain and without ornament. They have been thickly and roughly painted with several layers of high gloss white emulsion. The walls shine with great circles of light from the window and at night, the desk lamp, that are occasionally interrupted by my silhouette as it reflects on top of the frozen drips of paint. The paint hangs on the wall like the scales of a fish, layer upon heavily loaded layer; the weight of it threatening to drag it to the floor. Possibly, slowly and imperceptibly this is what is happening. But like a film still, it differs little from the frame either side of it and should be assumed to be static; from one moment to the next it is. The texture of the paint is the dominant feature of the room and the reason it remains undecorated. It is where my eyes fall in moments of procrastination, because that seems to be what I am doing in my dream.
On the far wall, to the left as you come through the door, are a series of recessed cupboards that reach from floor to ceiling. The cupboard doors are also painted to a high gloss, smoothly this time and are an assortment of sizes. They fit together in much the same way as the squares and rectangles of a Mondrian painting. The doors fit flush with the wall in order to maintain a sense of invisibility; the only obvious sign that they are there are an otherwise random dotting of grey handles. I have speculated that if you were to join these dots together they would reveal a coded message – however, when awake, I feel that this is unlikely.
I don’t remember the ceiling, I don’t think I ever looked up.
Divider/conveyor