Misplaced mis-shape...

"Your house was very small,

with wood-chip on the wall..."

Pulp, Disco 2000

I'm sitting at my parent's dinner table writing, the radio's off, the back door's open, one of the two cats is asleep on a chair beside me.  All I can hear is the clock ticking, the birds fighting over the feeder's in the back garden and the wind in the bamboo that grows right outside the back door.  There's coffee at my elbow and not a soul around.

It sounds perfect, doesn't it?  The ideal solitude for writing...  Instead, I'm distracted by the wealth of history around me, the largely unaltered shape of this familiar landscape.  The changes are all sub-terra, felt rather than seen, making what was once my home something like the button-eyed not-home of Neil Gaimain's Coraline.

Maybe it's just weird being here alone, it's a rare occurrence.  Before I left home, I would never have been here on my own and at a loss of what to do with myself.  The music would be loud, I'd be moving my entire bedroom around again or reading, writing or drawing...

But I'm no longer that person and despite being offered this precious quiet time in which to write, I find myself out of place, like something moved from the mantle-piece, leaving behind a ring of dust where I once was.

This place makes me look at who I was, the past that has shaped me, the generations which have raised me, the places that cup parts of my heart.

Maybe it's just the time of year, maybe it's just being here alone with the other dust ringed holes, maybe I should just go out into the sunshine and take a breath and remember to look forward.

And maybe I should just stop bitching and actually do some work...