Killspeak

(There was something to say about Heino Pars. There was a reason why you remember watching his films as a child, very early in the morning. Why are you reminded of him?)

Sunlight comes in through the window (a window that opens: rejoice) with complete disregard to my retarded sleep cycle—contempt, almost. My navy blinds are made a joke. Walls, furniture, retinas, all are blasted a fierce and relentless white until the late afternoon when the sun, gorged with the satisfaction of having made my adversely positioned monitor unusable for the majority of the day, lowers itself behind the houses across the way. My new room is beige only in the evening.

You’re using the space well, they’ve said. It was smart of you to remove the closet door. It must have saved, what, like, six inches along that wall. You’ve managed to fit quite a lot in here.

What they can’t appreciate is how new and fragile this economy is. How long do I expect to maintain the Scandinavian show-room tidiness that has freed so much space? This undramatic tautness is days old and already showing signs of atrophy, soon to give all at once. What they don’t see is the lack of purposeless surfaces. There’s no leeway. I sense the sagging shelves, can feel the failure of this room in the startling dreams I suffer in it, waking to sounds from the open window (a mixed blessing), to white walls.

I’m a stone fruit here. Not only in this room, but here in these twin cities. And on the television I’m being sold the tragedy of mismanagement.